LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 


"Marse  Henry" 

sIN  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 


HEXRY    WATTERSON     (ABOUT    1908) 


"Marse  Henry" 

AN  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

By 
HENRY  WATTERSON 


VOLUME  I 
Illustrated 


NEWXEITYORK 

GEORGE  H.DORAN  COMPANY 


LIBRARY 


COPYRIGHT,  1919, 
BY  GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


'COPYRIGHT,  1919,  BY  THE  CURTIS  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 
PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


TO  MY  FRIEND 

ALEXANDER  KONTA 

WITH  AFFECTIONATE  SALUTATION 


"MANSFIELD/' 
1919 


A  mound  of  earth  a  little  higher  graded: 
Perhaps  upon  a  stone  a  chiselled  name: 

A  dab  of  printer's  ink  soon  blurred  and  faded — 
And  then  oblivion — that — that  is  fame! 

— HENRY  WATTERSON 


[vii] 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  THE  FIRST 

PAGE 

I  AM  BORN  AND  BEGIN  TO  TAKE  NOTICE — JOHN 
QUINCY  ADAMS  AND  ANDREW  JACKSON — JAMES  K. 
POLK  AND  FRANKLIN  PIERCE — JACK  DADE  AND 
"BEAU  HICKMAN" — OLD  TIMES  IN  WASHINGTON  .  15 

CHAPTER  THE  SECOND 

SLAVERY  THE  TROUBLE-MAKER — BREAK-UP  OF  THE 
WHIG  PARTY  AND  RISE  OF  THE  REPUBLICAN — THE 
KEY — SICKLE'S  TRAGEDY — BROOKS  AND  SUMNER 
— LIFE  AT  WASHINGTON  IN  THE  FIFTIES  ...  49 

CHAPTER  THE  THIRD 

THE  INAUGURATION  OF  LINCOLN — I  QUIT  WASHINGTON 
AND  RETURN  TO  TENNESSEE — A  RUN-A-BOUT  WITH 
FOREST — THROUGH  THE  FEDERAL  LINES  AND  A 
DANGEROUS  ADVENTURE — GOOD  LUCK  AT  MEMPHIS  75 

CHAPTER  THE  FOURTH 

I  Go  TO  LONDON — AM  INTRODUCED  TO  A  NOTABLE  SET 
— HUXLEY,  SPENCER,  MILL  AND  TYNDALL — ARTE- 
MUS  WARD  COMES  TO  TOWN — THE  SAVAGE  CLUB  .  97 

CHAPTER  THE  FIFTH 

MARK  TWAIN — THE  ORIGINAL  OF  COLONEL  MULBERRY 
SELLERS — THE  "EARL  OF  DURHAM" — SOME  NOCTES 
AMBROSIAN^: — A  JOKE  ON  MURAT  HALSTEAD  .  119 

fix] 


CONTENTS 

PAQB 

CHAPTER  THE  SIXTH 

HOUSTON  AND  WIGFALL  OF  TEXAS — STEPHEN  A. 
DOUGLAS — THE  TWADDLE  ABOUT  PURITANS  AND 
CAVALIERS — ANDREW  JOHNSON  AND  JOHN  C.  BRECK- 
ENRIDGE 134 

CHAPTER  THE  SEVENTH 

AN  OLD  NEWSPAPER  ROOKERY — REACTIONARY  SEC 
TIONALISM  IN  CINCINNATI  AND  LOUISVILLE — THE 
COURIER-JOURNAL 161 

CHAPTER  THE  EIGHTH 

FEMINISM  AND  WOMAN  SUFFRAGE — THE  ADVENTURES 
IN  POLITICS  AND  SOCIETY — A  REAL  HEROINE  .  .  186 

CHAPTER  THE  NINTH 

DR.  NORVIN  GREEN — JOSEPH  PULITZER — CHESTER  A. 
ARTHUR — GENERAL  GRANT — THE  CASE  OF  FITZ- 
JOHN  PORTER 200 

CHAPTER  THE  TENTH 

OF  LIARS  AND  LYING — WOMAN  SUFFRAGE  AND  FEMIN 
ISM — THE  PROFESSIONAL  FEMALE — PARTIES,  POLI 
TICS,  AND  POLITICIANS  IN  AMERICA 219 

CHAPTER  THE  ELEVENTH 

ANDREW  JOHNSON — THE  LIBERAL  CONVENTION  IN  1872 
— CARL    SCHURZ — THE    "QUADRILATERAL" — SAM 
BOWLES,  HORACE  WHITE  AND  MURAT  HALSTEAD — 
A  QUEER  COMPOSITE  OF  INCONGRUITIES    .     .     .     236 
[x] 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER  THE  TWELFTH 

THE  IDEAL  IN  PUBLIC  LIFE — POLITICIANS,  STATESMEN 
AND  PHILOSOPHERS — THE  DISPUTED  PRESIDENCY 
IN  1876-7 — THE  PERSONALITY  AND  CHARACTER  OF 
MR.  TILDEN — His  ELECTION  AND  EXCLUSION  BY  A 
PARTISAN  TRIBUNAL  268 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

HENRY  WATTERSON  (ABOUT  1908)     ....  Frontispiece 

PAGE 

HENRY  CLAY — PAINTED  AT  ASHLAND  BY  DODGE  FOR 
THE  HON.  ANDREW  EWING  OF  TENNESSEE — THE 
ORIGINAL  HANGS  IN  MR.  WATTERSON'S  LIBRARY 
AT  "MANSFIELD" 56 

W.  P.  HARDEE,  LIEUTENANT  GENERAL  C.S.A.       .     .       64 

JOHN  BELL  OF  TENNESSEE — IN  1860  PRESIDENTIAL 
CANDIDATE  "UNION  PARTY" — "BELL  AND  EVER 
ETT"  TICKET 80 

ARTEMUS  WARD 112 

GENERAL  LEONIDAS  POLK — LIEUTENANT  GENERAL 
C.S.A.  KILLED  IN  GEORGIA,  JUNE  14,  1864— P.  E. 
BISHOP  OF  LOUISIANA 128 

MR.  WATTERSON'S  EDITORIAL  STAFF  IN  1868  WHEN  THE 
THREE  DAILY  NEWSPAPERS  OF  LOUISVILLE  WERE 
UNITED  INTO  THE  COURIER-JOURNAL.  MR.  GEORGE 
D.  PRENTICE  AND  MR.  WATTERSON  ARE  IN  THE 
CENTER 176 

ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  IN  1861.  FROM  A  PHOTOGRAPH  BY 
M.  B.  BRADY 240 

MRS.  LINCOLN  IN  1861 256 

[xiii] 


"Marse  Henry" 


"MARSE  HENRY" 


CHAPTER  THE  FIRST 

I  AM  BORN  AND  BEGIN  TO  TAKE  NOTICE — JOH7N 
QUINCY  ADAMS  AND  ANDREW  JACKSON — JAMES 
K.  POLK  AND  FRANKLIN  PIERCE — JACK  DADE 
AND  "BEAU  HICKMAN" — OLD  TIMES  IN  OLD 

WASHINGTON 

I 

T  AM  asked  to  jot  down  a  few  autobiographic 
-••  odds  and  ends  from  such  data  of  record  and 
memory  as  I  may  retain.  I  have  been  something 
of  a  student  of  life;  an  observer  of  men  and  women 
and  affairs;  an  appraiser  of  their  character,  their 
conduct,  and,  on  occasion,  of  their  motives.  Thus, 
a  kind  of  instinct,  which  bred  a  tendency  and  grew 
to  a  habit,  has  led  me  into  many  and  diverse  com 
panies,  the  lowest  not  always  the  meanest. 

Circumstance  has  rather  favored  than  hindered 
this  bent.    I  was  born  in  a  party  camp  and  grew  to 

[15] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

manhood  on  a  political  battlefield.  I  have  lived 
through  stirring  times  and  in  the  thick  of  events. 
In  a  vein  colloquial  and  reminiscential,  not  am 
bitious,  let  me  recall  some  impressions  which  these 
have  left  upon  the  mind  of  one  who  long  ago 
reached  and  turned  the  corner  of  the  Scriptural 
limitation;  who,  approaching  fourscore,  does  not 
yet  feel  painfully  the  frost  of  age  beneath  the 
ravage  of  time's  defacing  waves.  Assuredly  they 
have  not  obliterated  his  sense  either  of  vision  or 
vista.  Mindful  of  the  adjuration  of  Burns, 

Keep  something  to  yourself, 
Ye  scarcely  tell  to  ony, 

I  shall  yet  hold  little  in  reserve,  having  no  state 
secrets  or  mysteries  of  the  soul  to  reveal. 

It  is  not  my  purpose  to  be  or  to  seem  oracular. 
I  shall  not  write  after  the  manner  of  Rousseau, 
whose  Confessions  had  been  better  honored  in  the 
breach  than  the  observance,  and  in  any  event  whose 
sincerity  will  bear  question;  nor  have  I  tales  to  tell 
after  the  manner  of  Paul  Barras,  whose  Memoirs 
have  earned  him  an  immortality  of  infamy. 
Neither  shall  I  emulate  the  grandiose  volubility  and 
self-complacent  posing  of  Metternich  and  Talley- 
[16] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

rand,  whose  pretentious  volumes  rest  for  the  most 
part  unopened  upon  dusty  shelves.  I  aspire  to 
none  of  the  honors  of  the  historian.  It  shall  be 
my  aim  as  far  as  may  be  to  avoid  the  garrulity  of 
the  raconteur  and  to  restrain  the  exaggerations  of 
the  ego.  But  neither  fear  of  the  charge  of  self- 
exploitation  nor  the  specter  of  a  modesty  oft  too 
obtrusive  to  be  real  shall  deter  me  from  a  proper 
freedom  of  narration,  where,  though  in  the  main 
but  a  humble  chronicler,  I  must  needs  appear  upon 
the  scene  and  speak  of  myself;  for  I  at  least  have 
not  always  been  a  dummy  and  have  sometimes  in 
a  way  helped  to  make  history. 

In  my  early  life — as  it  were,  my  salad  days — I 
aspired  to  becoming  what  old  Simon  Cameron 
called  "one  of  those  damned  literary  fellows"  and 
Thomas  Carlyle  less  profanely  described  as  "a  lee- 
terary  celeebrity."  But  some  malign  fate  always 
sat  upon  my  ambitions  in  this  regard.  It  was  easy 
to  become  The  National  Gambler  in  Nast's  car 
toons,  and  yet  easier  The  National  Drunkard 
through  the  medium  of  the  everlasting  mint- julep 
joke;  but  the  phantom  of  the  laurel  crown  would 
never  linger  upon  my  fair  young  brow. 

Though  I  wrote  verses  for  the  early  issues  of 

[17] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Harper's  Weekly — happily  no  one  can  now  prove 
them  on  me,  for  even  at  that  jejune  period  I  had 
the  prudence  to  use  an  anonym — the  Harpers, 
luckily  for  me,  declined  to  publish  a  volume  of  my 
poems.  I  went  to  London,  carrying  with  me  "the 
great  American  novel."  It  was  actually  accepted 
by  my  ever  too  partial  friend,  Alexander  Macmil- 
lan.  But,  rest  his  dear  old  soul,  he  died  and  his 
successors  refused  to  see  the  transcendent  merit  of 
that  performance,  a  view  which  my  own  maturing 
sense  of  belles-lettres  values  subsequently  came  to 
verify. 

When  George  Harvey  arrived  at  the  front  I 
"  'ad  'opes."  But,  Lord,  that  cast-iron  man  had 
never  any  bookish  bowels  of  compassion — or  politi 
cal  either  for  the  matter  of  that! — so  that  finally  I 
gave  up  fiction  and  resigned  myself  to  the  humble 
category  of  the  crushed  tragi-comedians  of  litera 
ture,  who  inevitably  drift  into  journalism. 

Thus  my  destiny  has  been  casual.  A  great  man 
of  letters  quite  thwarted,  I  became  a  newspaper 
reporter — a  voluminous  space  writer  for  the  press 
— now  and  again  an  editor  and  managing  editor — 
until,  when  I  was  nearly  thirty  years  of  age,  I  hit 
the  Kentucky  trail  and  set  up  for  a  journalist.  I  did 
[18] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

this,  however,  with  a  big  "J,"  nursing  for  a  while 
some  faint  ambitions  of  statesmanship — even  office 
— but  in  the  end  discarding  everything  that  might 
obstruct  my  entire  freedom,  for  I  came  into  the 
world  an  insurgent,  or,  as  I  have  sometimes  des 
cribed  myself  in  the  Kentucky  vernacular,  "a  free 
nigger  and  not  a  slave  nigger." 

ii 

Though  born  in  a  party  camp  and  grown  to  man 
hood  on  a  political  battlefield  my  earlier  years  were 
most  seriously  influenced  by  the  religioas  spirit  of 
the  times.  We  passed  to  and  fro  between  Wash 
ington  and  the  two  family  homesteads  in  Tennessee, 
which  had  cradled  respectively  my  father  and 
mother,  Beech  Grove  in  Bedford  County,  and 
Spring  Hill  in  Maury  County.  Both  my  grand 
fathers  were  devout  churchmen  of  the  Presbyterian 
faith.  My  .Grandfather  Black,  indeed,  was  the  son 
of  a  Presbyterian  clergyman,  who  lived,  preached 
and  died  in  Madison  County,  Kentucky.  He  was 
descended,  I  am  assured,  in  a  straight  line  from 
that  David  Black,  of  Edinburgh,  who,  as  Burkle 
tells  us,  having  declared  in  a  sermon  that  Elizabeth 
of  England  was  a  harlot,  and  her  cousin,  Mary 

[19] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Queen  of  Scots,  little  better,  went  to  prison  for  it 
— all  honor  to  his  memory. 

My  Grandfather  Watterson  was  a  man  of  mark 
in  his  day.  He  was  decidedly  a  constructive — the 
projector  and  in  part  the  builder  of  an  important 
railway  line — an  early  friend  and  comrade  of  Gen 
eral  Jackson,  who  was  all  too  busy  to  take  office, 
and,  indeed,  who  throughout  his  life  disdained  the 
ephemeral  honors  of  public  life.  The  Wattersons 
had  migrated  directly  from  Virginia  to  Tennessee. 

The  two  families  were  prosperous,  even  wealthy 
for  those  days,  and  my  father  had  entered  public 
life  with  plenty  of  money,  and  General  Jackson 
for  his  sponsor.  It  was  not,  however,  his  ambitions 
or  his  career  that  interested  me — that  is,  not  until 
I  was  well  into  my  teens — but  the  camp  meetings 
and  the  revivalist  preachers  delivering  the  Word 
of  God  with  more  or  less  of  ignorant  yet  often  of 
very  eloquent  and  convincing  fervor. 

The  wave  of  the  great  Awakening  of  1800  had 
not  yet  subsided.  Bascom  was  still  alive.  I  have 
heard  him  preach.  The  people  were  filled  with 
thoughts  of  heaven  and  hell,  of  the  immortality  of 
the  soul  and  the  life  everlasting,  of  the  Redeemer 
and  the  Cross  of  Calvary.  The  camp  ground  wit- 
[20] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

nessed  an  annual  muster  of  the  adjacent  country 
side.  The  revival  was  a  religious  hysteria  lasting 
ten  days  or  two  weeks.  The  sermons  were  appeals 
to  the  emotions.  The  songs  were  the  outpourings 
of  the  soul  in  ecstacy.  There  was  no  fanaticism  of 
the  death-dealing,  prescriptive  sort;  nor  any  con 
scious  cant ;  simplicity,  childlike  belief  in  future  re 
wards  and  punishments,  the  orthodox  Gospel  the 
universal  rule.  There  was  a  good  deal  of  doughty 
controversy  between  the  churches,  as  between  the 
parties;  but  love  of  the  Union  and  the  Lord  was 
the  bedrock  of  every  confession. 

Inevitably  an  impressionable  and  imaginative 
mind  opening  to  such  sights  and  sounds  as  it 
emerged  from  infancy  must  have  been  deeply  af 
fected.  Until  I  was  twelve  years  old  the  enchant 
ment  of  religion  had  complete  possession  of  my 
understanding.  With  the  loudest,  I  could  sing  all 
the  hymns.  Being  early  taught  in  music  I  began 
to  transpose  them  into  many  sorts  of  rhythmic 
movement  for  the  edification  of  my  companions. 
Their  words,  aimed  directly  at  the  heart,  sank, 
never  to  be  forgotten,  into  my  memory.  To  this 
day  I  can  repeat  the  most  of  them — though  not 
without  a  break  of  voice — while  too  much  dwelling 

[21] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

upon  them  would  stir  me  to  a  pitch  of  feeling 
which  a  life  of  activity  in  very  different  walks  and 
ways  and  a  certain  self-control  I  have  been  always 
able  to  command  would  scarcely  suffice  to  restrain. 

The  truth  is  that  I  retain  the  spiritual  essentials 
I  learned  then  and  there.  I  never  had  the  young 
man's  period  of  disbelief.  There  has  never  been  a 
time  when  if  the  Angel  of  Death  had  appeared 
upon  the  scene — no  matter  how  festal — I  would 
not  have  knelt  with  adoration  and  welcome ;  never 
a  time  on  the  battlefield  or  at  sea  when  if  the  ele 
ments  had  opened  to  swallow  me  I  would  not  have 
gone  down  shouting  1 

Sectarianism  in  time  yielded  to  universalism. 
Theology  came  to  seem  to  my  mind  more  and  more 
a  weapon  in  the  hands  of  Satan  to  embroil  and 
divide  the  churches.  I  found  in  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount  leading  enough  for  my  ethical  guidance, 
in  the  life  and  death  of  the  Man  of  Galilee  inspira 
tion  enough  to  fulfill  my  heart's  desire ;  and  though 
I  have  read  a  great  deal  of  modern  inquiry — from 
Renan  and  Huxley  through  Newman  and  Doll- 
inger,  embracing  debates  before,  during  and  after 
the  English  upheaval  of  the  late  fifties  and  the 
Ecumenical  Council  of  1870,  including  the  various 
[22] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

raids  upon  the  Westminster  Confession,  especially 
the  revision  of  the  Bible,  down  to  writers  like 
Frederic  Harrison  and  Doctor  Campbell — I  have 
found  nothing  to  shake  my  childlike  faith  in  the 
simple  rescript  of  Christ  and  Him  crucified. 

in 

From  their  admission  into  the  Union,  the  States 
of  Kentucky  and  Tennessee  have  held  a  relation  to 
the  politics  of  the  country  somewhat  dispropor- 
tioned  to  their  population  and  wealth.  As  be 
tween  the  two  parties  from  the  Jacksonian  era  to 
the  War  of  Sections,  each  was  closely  and  hotly 
contested.  If  not  the  birthplace  of  what  was  called 
"stump  oratory,"  in  them  that  picturesque  form  of 
party  warfare  flourished  most  and  lasted  longest. 
The  "barbecue"  was  at  once  a  rustic  feast  and  a 
forum  of  political  debate.  Especially  notable  was 
the  presidential  campaign  of  1840,  the  year  of 
my  birth,  "Tippecanoe  and  Tyler,"  for  the  Whig 
slogan— "Old  Hickory"  and  "the  battle  of  New 
Orleans,"  the  Democratic  rallying  cry — Jackson 
and  Clay,  the  adored  party  chieftains. 

I  grew  up  in  the  one  State,  and  have  passed  the 
rest  of  my  life  in  the  other,  cherishing  for  both  a 

[23] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

deep  affection,  and,  maybe,  over-estimating  their 
hold  upon  the  public  interest.  Excepting  General 
Jackson,  who  was  a  fighter  and  not  a  talker,  their 
public  men,  with  Henry  Clay  and  Felix  Grundy  in 
the  lead,  were  "stump  orators."  He  who  could  not 
relate  and  impersonate  an  anecdote  to  illustrate  and 
clinch  his  argument,  nor  "make  the  welkin  ring" 
with  the  clarion  tones  of  his  voice,  was  politically 
good  for  nothing.  James  K.  Polk  and  James  C. 
Jones  led  the  van  of  stump  orators  in  Tennessee, 
Ben  Hardin,  John  J.  Crittenden  and  John  C. 
Breckenridge  in  Kentucky.  Tradition  still  has 
stories  to  tell  of  their  exploits  and  prowess,  their  wit 
and  eloquence,  even  their  commonplace  sayings 
and  doings.  They  were  marked  men  who  never 
failed  to  captivate  their  audiences.  The  system  of 
stump  oratory  had  many  advantages  as  a  public 
force  and  was  both  edifying  and  educational. 
There  were  a  few  conspicuous  writers  for  the  press, 
such  as  Ritchie,  Greeley  and  Prentice.  But  the 
day  of  personal  journalism  and  newspaper  in 
fluence  came  later. 

I  was  born  at  Washington — February  16,  1840 
— "a  bad  year  for  Democrats,"  as  my  father  used 
[24] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

to  say,  adding:    "I  am  afraid  the  boy  will  grow  up 
to  be  a  Whig." 

In  those  primitive  days  there  were  only  Whigs 
and  Democrats.  Men  took  their  politics,  as  their 
liquor,  "straight";  and  this  father  of  mine  was  an 
undoubting  Democrat  of  the  schools  of  Jefferson 
and  Jackson.  He  had  succeeded  James  K.  Polk 
in  Congress  when  the  future  President  was  elected 
governor  of  Tennessee ;  though  when  nominated  he 
was  little  beyond  the  age  required  to  qualify  as  a 
member  of  the  House. 

To  the  end  of  his  long  life  he  appeared  to  me  the 
embodiment  of  wisdom,  integrity  and  couarge. 
And  so  he  was — a  man  of  tremendous  force  of 
character,  yet  of  surpassing  sweetness  of  disposi 
tion;  singularly  disdainful  of  office,  and  indeed  of 
preferment  of  every  sort;  a  profuse  maker  and  a 
prodigal  spender  of  money;  who,  his  needs  and 
recognition  assured,  cared  nothing  at  all  for  what 
he  regarded  as  the  costly  glories  of  the  little  great 
men  who  rattled  round  in  places  often  much  too 
big  for  them. 

Immediately  succeeding  Mr.  Polk,  and  such  a 
youth  in  appearance,  he  attracted  instant  attention. 
His  father,  my  grandfather,  allowed  him  a  larger 

[25] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

income  than  was  good  for  him — seeing  that  the  per 
diem  then  paid  Congressmen  was  altogethr  insuffi 
cient — and  during  the  earlier  days  of  his  sojourn  in 
the  national  capital  he  cut  a  wide  swath ;  his  princi 
pal  yokemate  in  the  pleasures  and  dissipations  of 
those  times  being  Franklin  Pierce,  at  first  a  repre 
sentative  and  then  a  senator  from  New  Hampshire. 
Fortunately  for  both  of  them,  they  were  whisked 
out  of  Washington  by  their  families  in  1843;  my 
father  into  the  diplomatic  service  and  Mr.  Pierce 
to  the  seclusion  of  his  New  England  home.  They 
kept  in  close  touch,  however,  the  one  with  the  other, 
and  ten  years  later,  in  1853,  were  back  again  upon 
the  scene  of  their  rather  conspicuous  frivolity, 
Pierce  as  President  of  the  United  States,  my  fa 
ther,  who  had  preceded  him  a  year  or  two,  as  editor 
of  the  Washington  Union,  the  organ  of  the  Ad 
ministration. 

When  I  was  a  boy  the  national  capital  was  still 
rife  with  stories  of  their  escapades.  One  that  I 
recall  had  it  that  on  a  certain  occasion  returning 
from  an  excursion  late  at  night  my  father  missed 
his  footing  and  fell  into  the  canal  that  then  divided 
the  city,  and  that  Pierce,  after  many  fruitless  ef 
forts,  unable  to  assist  him  to  dry  land,  exclaimed, 
[26] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

"Well,  Harvey,  I  can't  get  you  out,  but  I'll  get  in 
with  you,"  suiting  the  action  to  the  word.  And 
there  they  were  found  and  rescued  by  a  party  of 
passers,  very  well  pleased  with  themselves. 

My  father's  absence  in  South  America  extended 
over  two  years.  My  mother's  health,  maybe  her 
aversion  to  a  long  overseas  journey,  kept  her  at 
home,  and  very  soon  he  tired  of  life  abroad  without 
her  and  came  back.  A  committee  of  citizens  went 
on  a  steamer  down  the  river  to  meet  him,  the  wife 
and  child  along,  of  course,  and  the  story  was  told 
that,  seated  on  the  paternal  knee  curiously  observ 
ant  of  every  detail,  the  brat  suddenly  exclaimed, 
"Ah  ha,  pa!  Now  you've  got  on  your  store  clothes. 
But  when  ma  gets  you  up  at  Beech  Grove  you'll 
have  to  lay  off  your  broadcloth  and  put  on  your 
jeans,  like  I  do." 

Being  an  only  child  and  often  an  invalid,  I  was  a 
pet  in  the  family  and  many  tales  were  told  of  my 
infantile  precocity.  On  one  occasion  I  had  a  fight 
with  a  little  colored  boy  of  my  own  age  and  I  need 
not  say  got  the  worst  of  it.  My  grandfather,  who 
came  up  betimes  and  separated  us,  said,  "he  has 
blackened  your  eye  and  he  shall  black  your  boots," 
thereafter  making  me  a  deed  to  the  lad.  We  grew 

[27] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

up  together  in  the  greatest  amity  and  in  due  time  I 
gave  him  his  freedom,  and  again  to  drop  into  the 
vernacular — "that  was  the  only  nigger  I  ever 
owned."  I  should  add  that  in  the  "War  of  Sec 
tions"  he  fell  in  battle  bravely  fighting  for  the  free 
dom  of  his  race. 

It  is  truth  to  say  that  I  cannot  recall  the  time 
when  I  was  not  passionately  opposed  to  slavery,  a 
crank  on  the  subject  of  personal  liberty,  if  I  am  a 
crank  about  anything. 

IV 

In  those  days  a  less  attractive  place  than  the  city 
of  Washington  could  hardly  be  imagined.  It  was 
scattered  over  an  ill-paved  and  half -filled  oblong 
extending  east  and  west  from  the  Capitol  to  the 
White  House,  and  north  and  south  from  the  line  of 
the  Maryland  hills  to  the  Potomac  River.  One  does 
not  wonder  that  the  early  Britishers,  led  by  Tom 
Moore,  made  game  of  it,  for  it  was  both  unprom 
ising  and  unsightly. 

Private  carriages  were  not  numerous.   Hackney 

coaches  had  to  be  especially  ordered.     The  only 

public  conveyance  was  a  rickety  old  omnibus  which, 

making  hourly  trips,  plied  its  lazy  journey  between 

[28] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

the  Navy  Yard  and  Georgetown.  There  was  a 
livery  stable — Kimball's — having  "stalls,"  as  the 
sleeping  apartments  above  came  to  be  called,  thus 
literally  serving  man  and  beast.  These  stalls  often 
lodged  very  distinguished  people.  Kimball,  the 
proprietor,  a  New  Hampshire  Democrat  of  impos 
ing  appearance,  was  one  of  the  last  Washingtonians 
to  wear  knee  breeches  and  a  ruffled  shirt.  He  was  a 
great  admirer  of  my  father  and  his  place  was  a 
resort  of  my  childhood. 

One  day  in  the  early  April  of  1852  I  was 
humped  in  a  chair  upon  one  side  of  the  open  en 
trance  reading  a  book — Mr.  Kimball  seated  on  the 
other  side  reading  a  newspaper — when  there  came 
down  the  street  a  tall,  greasy-looking  person,  who 
as  he  approached  said:  "Kimball,  I  have  another 
letter  here  from  Frank." 

"Well,  what  does  Frank  say?" 

Then  the  letter  was  produced,  read  and  discussed. 

It  was  all  about  the  coming  National  Democratic 
Convention  and  its  prospective  nominee  for  Presi 
dent  of  the  United  States,  "Frank"  seeming  to  be 
a  principal.  To  me  it  sounded  very  queer.  But  I 
took  it  all  in,  and  as  soon  as  I  reached  home  I  put 
it  up  to  my  father: 

[29] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

"How  comes  it,"  I  asked,  "that  a  big  old  loafer 
gets  a  letter  from  a  candidate  for  President  and 
talks  it  over  with  the  keeper  of  a  livery  stable? 
What  have  such  people  to  do  with  such  things?" 

My  father  said:  "My  son,  Mr.  Kimball  is  an  es 
timable  man.  He  has  been  an  important  and 
popular  Democrat  in  New  Hampshire.  He  is  not 
without  influence  here.  The  Frank  they  talked 
about  is  Gen.  Franklin  Pierce,  of  New  Hampshire, 
an  old  friend  and  neighbor  of  Mr.  Kimball.  Gen 
eral  Pierce  served  in  Congress  with  me  and  some 
of  us  are  thinking  that  we  may  nominate  him  for 
President.  The  'big  old  loafer,'  as  you  call  him, 
was  Mr.  John  C.  Rives,  a  most  distinguished  and 
influential  Democrat  indeed." 

Three  months  later,  when  the  event  came  to  pass, 
I  could  tell  all  about  Gen.  Franklin  Pierce.  His 
nomination  was  no  surprise  to  me,  though  to  the 
country  at  large  it  was  almost  a  shock.  He  had 
been  nowhere  seriously  considered. 

In  illustration  of  this  a  funny  incident  recurs  to 
me.  At  Nashville  the  night  of  the  nomination  a 
party  of  Whigs  and  Democrats  had  gathered  in 
front  of  the  principal  hotel  waiting  for  the  arrival 
of  the  news,  among  the  rest  Sam  Bugg  and  Chunky 
[30] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Towles,  two  local  gamblers,  both  undoubting 
Democrats.  At  length  Chunky  Towles,  worn  out, 
went  off  to  bed.  The  result  was  finally  flashed  over 
the  wires.  The  crowd  was  nonplused.  "Who  the 
hell  is  Franklin  Pierce?"  passed  from  lip  to  lip. 

Sam  Bugg  knew  his  political  catechism  well.  He 
proceeded  at  length  to  tell  all  about  Franklin 
Pierce,  ending  with  the  opinion  that  he  was  the 
man  wanted  and  would  be  elected  hands  down,  and 
he  had  a  thousand  dollars  to  bet  on  it. 

Then  he  slipped  away  to  tell  his  pal. 

"Wake  up,  Chunky,"  he  cried.  "We  got  a  candi 
date — Gen.  Franklin  Pierce,  of  New  Hampshire." 

"Who  the " 

"Chunky,"  says  Sam.  "I  am  ashamed  of  your 
ignorance.  Gen.  Franklin  Pierce  is  the  son  of 
Gen.  Benjamin  Pierce,  of  Revolutionary  fame. 
He  has  served  in  both  houses  of  Congress.  He  de 
clined  a  seat  in  Polk's  Cabinet.  He  won  distinc 
tion  in  the  Mexican  War.  He  is  the  very  candidate 
we've  been  after." 

"In  that  case,"  says  Chunky,  "I'll  get  up." 
When  he  reappeared  Petway,  the  Whig  leader  of 
the  gathering,  who  had  been  deriding  the  conven- 

[31] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

tion,  the  candidate  and  all  things  else  Democratic, 
exclaimed : 

"Here  comes  Chunky  Towles.  He's  a  good 
Democrat;  and  I'll  bet  ten  to  one  he  never  heard 
of  Franklin  Pierce  in  his  life  before." 

Chunky  Towles  was  one  of  the  handsomest  men 
of  his  time.  His  strong  suit  was  his  unruffled  com 
posure  and  cool  self-control.  "Mr.  Petway,"  says 
he,  "y°u  would  lose  your  money,  and  I  won't  take 
advantage  of  any  man's  ignorance.  Besides,  I 
never  gamble  on  a  certainty.  Gen.  Franklin 
Pierce,  sir,  is  a  son  of  Gen.  Benjamin  Pierce  of 
Revolutionary  memory.  He  served  in  both  houses 
of  Congress,  sir — refused  a  seat  in  Polk's  Cabinet, 
sir — won  distinction  in  the  Mexican  War,  sir.  He 
has  been  from  the  first  my  choice,  and  I've  money 
to  bet  on  his  election." 

Franklin  Pierce  had  an  only  son,  named  Benny, 
after  his  grandfather,  the  Revolutionary  hero.  He 
was  of  my  own  age.  I  was  planning  the  good  time 
we  were  going  to  have  in  the  White  House  when 
tidings  came  that  he  had  been  killed  in  a  railway 
accident.  It  was  a  grievous  blow,  from  which  the 
stricken  mother  never  recovered.  One  of  the  most 
vivid  memories  and  altogether  the  saddest  episode 
[32] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

of  my  childhood  is  that  a  few  weeks  later  I  was 
carried  up  to  the  Executive  Mansion,  which,  all 
formality  and  marble,  seemed  cold  enough  for  a 
mausoleum,  where  a  lady  in  black  took  me  in  her 
arms  and  convulsively  held  me  there,  wreeping  as 
if  her  heart  would  break. 


Sometimes  a  fancy,  rather  vague,  comes  to  me 
of  seeing  the  soldiers  go  off  to  the  Mexican  War 
and  of  making  flags  striped  with  pokeberry  juice 
— somehow  the  name  of  the  fruit  was  mingled  with 
that  of  the  President — though  a  visit  quite  a  year 
before  to  The  Hermitage,  which  adjoined  the  farm 
of  an  uncle,  to  see  General  Jackson  is  still  un- 
effaced. 

I  remember  it  vividly.  The  old  hero  dandled  me 
in  his  arms,  saying  "So  this  is  Harvey's  boy,"  I 
looking  the  while  in  vain  for  the  "hickory,"  of 
which  I  had  heard  so  much. 

On  the  personal  side  history  owes  General  Jack 
son  reparation.  His  personality  needs  indeed  com 
plete  reconstruction  in  the  popular  mind,  which 
misconceives  him  a  rough  frontiersman  having  few 
or  none  of  the  social  graces.  In  point  of  fact  he 

[33] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

came  into  the  world  a  gentleman,  a  leader,  a  knight- 
errant  who  captivated  women  and  dominated  men. 

I  shared  when  a  young  man  the  common  belief 
ahout  him.  But  there  is  ample  proof  of  the  error 
of  this.  From  middle  age,  though  he  ever  liked  a 
horse  race,  he  was  a  regular  if  not  a  devout  church 
man.  He  did  not  swear  at  all,  "by  the  Eternal" 
or  any  other  oath.  When  he  reached  New  Orleans 
in  1814  to  take  command  of  the  army,  Governor 
Claiborne  gave  him  a  dinner ;  and  after  he  had  gone 
Mrs.  Claiborne,  who  knew  European  courts  and 
society  better  than  any  other  American  woman, 
said  to  her  husband:  "Call  that  man  a  backwoods 
man?  He  is  the  finest  gentleman  I  ever  met!" 

There  is  another  witness — Mr.  Buchanan,  after 
ward  President — who  tells  how  he  took  a  distin 
guished  English  lady  to  the  White  House  when 
Old  Hickory  was  President;  how  he  went  up  to 
the  general's  private  apartment,  where  he  found 
him  in  a  ragged  robe-de-chambre,  smoking  his 
pipe;  how,  when  he  intimated  that  the  President 
might  before  coming  down  slick  himself  a  bit,  he 
received  the  half -laughing  rebuke:  "Buchanan,  I 
once  knew  a  man  in  Virginia  who  made  himself 
independently  rich  by  minding  his  own  business"; 
[34] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

how,  when  he  did  come  down,  he  was  en  regie;  and 
finally  how,  after  a  half  hour  of  delightful  talk,  the 
English  lady  as  they  regained  the  street  broke  forth 
with  enthusiasm,  using  almost  the  selfsame  words 
of  Mrs.  Claiborne:  "He  is  the  finest  gentleman  I 
ever  met  in  the  whole  course  of  my  life." 

VI 

The  Presidential  campaign  of  1848 — and  the 
concurrent  return  of  the  Mexican  soldiers — seems 
but  yesterday.  We  were  in  Nashville,  where  the 
camp  fires  of  the  two  parties  burned  fiercely  day 
and  night,  Tennessee  a  debatable,  even  a  pivotal 
state.  I  was  an  enthusiastic  politician  on  the  Cass 
and  Butler  side,  and  was  correspondingly  disap 
pointed  when  the  election  went  against  us  for  Tay 
lor  and  Fillmore,  though  a  little  mollified  when, 
on  his  way  to  Washington,  General  Taylor  grasp 
ing  his  old  comrade,  my  grandfather,  by  the  hand, 
called  him  "Billy,"  and  paternally  stroked  my 
curls. 

Though  the  next  winter  we  passed  in  Washing 
ton  I  never  saw  him  in  the  White  House.  He  died 
in  July,  1850,  and  was  succeeded  by  Millard  Fill- 
more.  It  is  common  to  speak  of  Old  Rough  and 

[35] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Ready  as  an  ignoramus.  I  don't  think  this.  He 
may  not  have  been  very  courtly,  but  he  was  a 
gentleman. 

Later  in  life  I  came  to  know  Millard  Fillmore 
well  and  to  esteem  him  highly.  Once  he  told  me 
that  Daniel  Webster  had  said  to  him:  "Fillmore, 
I  like  Clay — I  like  Clay  very  much — but  he  rides 
rough,  sir;  damned  rough!" 

I  was  fond  of  going  to  the  Capitol  and  of  play 
ing  amateur  page  in  the  House,  of  which  my  father 
had  been  a  member  and  where  he  had  many  friends, 
though  I  was  never  officially  a  page.  There  was  in 
particular  a  little  old  bald-headed  gentleman  who 
was  good  to  me  and  would  put  his  arm  about  me 
and  stroll  with  me  across  the  rotunda  to  the  Library 
of  Congress  and  get  me  books  to  read.  I  was  not 
so  young  as  not  to  know  that  he  was  an  ex-Presi 
dent  of  the  United  States,  and  to  realize  the  mean 
ing  of  it.  He  had  been  the  oldest  member  of  the 
House  when  my  father  was  the  youngest.  He  was 
John  Quincy  Adams.  By  chance  I  was  on  the 
floor  of  the  House  when  he  fell  in  his  place,  and 
followed  the  excited  and  tearful  throng  when  they 
bore  him  into  the  Speaker's  Room,  kneeling  by  the 
[36] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

side  of  the  sofa  with  an  improvised  fan  and  crying 
as  if  my  heart  would  break. 

One  day  in  the  spring  of  1851  my  father  took  me 
to  a  little  hotel  on  Pennsylvania  Avenue  near  the 
Capitol  and  into  a  stuffy  room,  where  a  snuffy  old 
man  wearing  an  ill-fitting  wig  was  busying  himself 
over  a  pile  of  documents.  He  turned  about  and 
was  very  hearty. 

"Aha,  you've  brought  the  boy,"  said  he. 

And  my  father  said:  "My  son,  you  wanted  to 
see  General  Cass,  and  here  he  is." 

My  enthusiasm  over  the  Cass  and  Butler  cam 
paign  had  not  subsided.  Inevitably  General  Cass 
was  to  me  the  greatest  of  heroes.  My  father  had 
been  and  always  remained  his  close  friend.  Later 
along  we  dwelt  together  at  Willard's  Hotel,  my 
mother  a  chaperon  for  Miss  Belle  Cass,  afterward 
Madame  Von  Limbourg,  and  I  came  into  familiar 
intercourse  with  the  family. 

The  general  made  me  something  of  a  pet  and 
never  ceased  to  be  a  hero  to  me.  I  still  think  he 
was  one  of  the  foremost  statesmen  of  his  time  and 
treasure  a  birthday  present  he  made  me  when  I  was 
just  entering  my  teens. 

[37] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

The  hour  I  passed  with  him  that  afternoon  I  shall 
never  forget. 

As  we  were  about  taking  our  leave  my  father 
said:  "Well,  my  son,  you  have  seen  General  Cass; 
what  do  you  think  of  him?" 

And  the  general  patting  me  affectionately  on  the 
head  laughingly  said:  ."He  thinks  he  has  seen  a 
pretty  good-looking  old  fogy — that  is  what  he 
^hinks!" 

VII 

There  flourished  in  the  village  life  of  Washing 
ton  two  old  blokes — no  other  word  can  proprly  de 
scribe  them — Jack  Dade,  who  signed  himself  "the 
Honorable  John  W.  Dade,  of  Virginia;"  and 
Beau  Hickman,  who  hailed  from  nowhere  and  ac 
quired  the  pseudonym  through  sheer  impudence. 
In  one  way  and  another  they  lived  by  their  wits, 
the  one  all  dignity,  the  other  all  cheek.  Hickman 
fell  very  early  in  his  career  of  sponge  and  beggar, 
tut  Dade  lived  long  and  died  in  office — indeed,  to 
ward  the  close  an  office  was  actually  created  for 
him. 

Dade  had  been  a  schoolmate  of  John  Tyler — so 
intimate  they  were  that  at  college  they  were  called 
"the  two  Jacks" — and  when  the  death  of  Harrison 
[38] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

made  Tyler  President,  the  "off  Jack,"  as  he  dub 
bed  himself,  went  up  to  the  White  House  and  said: 
*Jack  Tyler,  you've  had  luck  and  I  haven't.  You 
must  do  something  for  me  and  do  it  quick.  I'm 
ihard  up  and  I  want  an  office." 

"You  old  reprobate,"  said  Tyler,  "what  office 
on  earth  do  you  think  you  are  fit  to  fill?" 

"Well,"  said  Bade,  "I  have  heard  them  talking 
round  here  of  a  place  they  call  a  sine-cu-ree — big 
pay  and  no  work — and  if  there  is  one  of  them  left 
!and  lying  about  loose  I  think  I  could  fill  it  to  a  T." 

"All  right,"  said  the  President  good  naturedly, 
"I'll  see  what  can  be  done.  Come  up  to-morrow." 

The  next  day  "Col.  John  W.  Dade,  of  Virginia," 
was  appointed  keeper  of  the  Federal  prison  of  the 
District  of  Columbia.  He  assumed  his  post  with 
empressement,  called  the  prisoners  before  him  and 
made  them  an  address. 

"Ladies  and  gentlemen,"  said  he;  "I  have  been 
chosen  by  my  friend,  the  President  of  the  United 
States,  as  superintendent  of  this  eleemosynary  in 
stitution.  It  is  my  intention  to  treat  you  all  as  a 
Virginia  gentleman  should  treat  a  body  of  Ameri 
can  ladies  and  gentlemen  gathered  here  from  all 
parts  of  our  beloved  Union,  and  I  shall  expect  the 
same  consideration  in  return.  Otherwise  I  will 

[39] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

turn  you  all  out  upon  the  cold  mercies  of  a  heart 
less  world  and  you  will  have  to  work  for  your  liv 
ing." 

There  came  to  Congress  from  Alabama  a  roister 
ing  blade  by  the  name  of  McConnell.  He  was 
something  of  a  wit.  During  his  brief  sojourn  in 
the  national  capital  he  made  a  noisy  record  for  him 
self  as  an  all-round,  all-night  man  about  town,  a 
dare-devil  and  a  spendthrift.  His  first  encounter 
with  Col.  John  W.  Dade,  of  Virginia,  used  to  be 
one  of  the  standard  local  jokes.  Colonel  Dade  was 
seated  in  the  barroom  of  Brown's  Hotel  early  one 
morning,  waiting  for  someone  to  come  in  and  invite 
him  to  drink. 

Presently  McConnell  arrived.  It  was  his  custom 
when  he  entered  a  saloon  to  ask  the  entire  roomful, 
no  matter  how  many,  "to  come  up  and  licker,"  and, 
of  course,  he  invited  the  solitary  stranger. 

When  the  glasses  were  filled  Dade  pompously 
said:  "With  whom  have  I  the  honor  of  drinking?" 

"My   name,"   answered   McConnell,    "is   Felix 

Grundy  McConnell,  begad!     I  am  a  member  of 

Congress  from  Alabama.    My  mother  is  a  justice 

of  the  peace,  my  aunt  keeps  a  livery  stable,  and  my 

[40] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

grandmother  commanded  a  company  in  the  Revolu 
tion  and  fit  the  British,  gol  darn  their  souls!" 

Dade  pushed  his  glass  aside. 

"Sir,"  said  he,  "I  am  a  man  of  high  aspirations 
and  peregrinations  and  can  have  nothing  to  do  with 
such  low-down  scopangers  as  yourself.  Good  morn 
ing,  sir!" 

It  may  be  presumed  that  both  spoke  in  jest,  be 
cause  they  became  inseparable  companions  and  the 
best  of  friends. 

McConnell  had  a  tragic  ending.  In  James  K. 
Folk's  diary  I  find  two  entries  under  the  dates, 
respectively,  of  September  8  and  September  10, 
1846.  The  first  of  these  reads  as  follows:  "Hon. 
Felix  G.  McConnell,  a  representative  in  Congress 
from  Alabama  called.  He  looked  very  badly  and 
as  though  he  had  just  recovered  from  a  fit  of  in 
toxication.  He  was  sober,  but  was  pale,  his  counte 
nance  haggard  and  his  system  nervous.  He  ap 
plied  to  me  to  borrow  one  hundred  dollars  and  said 
he  would  return  it  to  me  in  ten  days. 

"Though  I  had  no  idea  that  he  would  do  so  I 
had  a  sympathy  for  him  even  in  his  dissipation.  I 
had  known  him  in  his  youth  and  had  not  the  moral 
courage  to  refuse.  I  gave  him  the  one  hundred 

[41] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

dollars  in  gold  and  took  his  note.  His  hand  was 
so  tremulous  that  he  could  scarcely  write  his  name 
to  the  note  legibly.  I  think  it  probable  that  he  will 
never  pay  me.  He  informed  me  he  was  detained 
at  Washington  attending  to  some  business  in  the 
Indian  Office.  I  supposed  he  had  returned  home 
at  the  adjournment  of  Congress  until  he  called 
to-day.  I  doubt  whether  he  has  any  business  in 
Washington,  but  fear  he  has  been  detained  by  dis 
sipation." 

The  second  of  Mr.  Folk's  entries  is  a  corollary 
(of  the  first  and  reads :  "About  dark  this  evening  I 
learned  from  Mr.  Voorhies,  who  is  acting  as  my 
private  secretary  during  the  absence  of  J.  Knox 
Walker,  that  Hon.  Felix  G.  McConnell,  a  repre 
sentative  in  Congress  from  the  state  of  Alabama, 
had  committed  suicide  this  afternoon  at  the  St. 
Charles  Hotel,  where  he  boarded.  On  Tuesday 
last  Mr.  McConnell  called  on  me  and  I  loaned  him 
one  hundred  dollars.  [See  this  diary  of  that  day.] 
I  learn  that  but  a  short  time  before  the  horrid  deed 
was  committed  he  was  in  the  barroom  of  the  St. 
Charles  Hotel  handling  gold  pieces  and  stating  that 
he  had  received  them  from  me,  and  that  he  loaned 
thirty-five  dollars  of  them  to  the  barkeeper,  that 
[42] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

shortly  afterward  he  had  attempted  to  write  some 
thing,  but  what  I  have  not  learned,  but  he  had  not 
written  much  when  he  said  he  would  go  to  his 
room. 

"In  the  course  of  the  morning  I  learn  he  went 
into  the  city  and  paid  a  hackman  a  small  amount 
which  he  owed  him.  He  had  locked  his  room  door, 
and  when  found  he  was  stretched  out  on  his  back 
with  his  hands  extended,  weltering  in  his  blood.  He 
had  three  wounds  in  the  abdomen  and  his  throat 
was  cut.  A  hawkbill  knife  was  found  near  him. 
A  jury  of  inquest  was  held  and  found  a  verdict  that 
he  had  destroyed  himself.  It  was  a  melancholy  in 
stance  of  the  effects  of  intemperance.  Mr.  Mc- 
Connell  when  a  youth  resided  at  Fayetteville  in 
my  congressional  district.  Shortly  after  he  grew 
up  to  manhood  he  was  at  my  instance  appointed 
postmaster  of  that  town.  He  was  a  true  Democrat 
and  a  sincere  friend  of  mine. 

"His  family  in  Tennessee  are  highly  respectable 
and  quite  numerous.  The  information  as  to  the 
manner  and  particulars  of  his  death  I  learned  from 
Mr.  Voorhies,  who  reported  it  to  me  as  he  had  heard 
it  in  the  streets.  Mr.  McConnell  removed  from 

[43] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Tennessee  to  Alabama  some  years  ago,  and  I  learn 
he  has  left  a  wife  and  three  or  four  children." 

Poor  Felix  Grundy  McConnell!  At  a  school  in 
Tennessee  he  was  a  roommate  of  my  father,  who 
related  that  one  night  Felix  awakened  with  a 
scream  from  a  bad  dream  he  had,  the  dream  being 
that  he  had  cut  his  own  throat. 

"Old  Jack  Dade,"  as  he  was  always  called,  lived 
on,  from  hand  to  mouth,  I  dare  say — for  he  lost  his 
job  as  keeper  of  the  district  prison — yet  never 
wholly  out-at-heel,  scrupulously  neat  in  his  person 
no  matter  how  seedy  the  attire.  On  the  completion 
of  the  new  wings  of  the  Capitol  and  the  removal 
of  the  House  to  its  more  commodious  quarters  he 
was  made  custodian  of  the  old  Hall  of  Representa 
tives,  a  post  he  held  until  he  died. 

VIII 

Between  the  idiot  and  the  man  of  sense,  the 
lunatic  and  the  man  of  genius,  there  are  degrees — 
streaks — of  idiocy  and  lunacy.  How  many  ex 
pectant  politicians  elected  to  Congress  have  entered 
Washington  all  hope,  eager  to  dare  and  do,  to  come 
away  broken  in  health,  fame  and  fortune,  happy 
to  get  back  home — sometimes  unable  to  get  away, 
[44] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

to  linger  on  in  obscurity  and  poverty  to  a  squalid 
and  wretched  old  age. 

I  have  lived  long  enough  to  have  known  many 
such:  Senators  who  have  filled  the  galleries  when 
they  rose  to  speak;  House  heroes  living  while  they 
could  on  borrowed  money,  then  hanging  about  the 
hotels  begging  for  money  to  buy  drink. 

There  was  a  famous  statesman  and  orator  who 
came  to  this  at  last,  of  whom  the  typical  and  char 
acteristic  story  was  told  that  the  holder  of  a  claim 
against  the  Government,  who  dared  not  approach 
so  great  a  man  with  so  much  as  the  intimation  of  a 
bribe,  undertook  by  argument  to  interest  him  in  the 
merit  of  the  case. 

The  great  man  listened  and  replied:  "I  have 
noticed  you  scattering  your  means  round  here 
pretty  freely  but  you  haven't  said  'turkey'  to  me." 

Surprised  but  glad  and  unabashed  the  claimant 
said  "I  was  coming  to  that,"  produced  a  thousand- 
dollar  bank  roll  and  entered  into  an  understand 
ing  as  to  what  was  to  be  done  next  day,  when  the 
bill  was  due  on  the  calendar. 

The  great  man  took  the  money,  repaired  to  a 
gambling  house,  had  an  extraordinary  run  of  luck, 
won  heavily,  and  playing  all  night,  forgetting  about 

[45] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

his  engagement,  went  to  bed  at  daylight,  not  ap 
pearing  in  the  House  at  all.  The  bill  was  called, 
and  there  being  nobody  to  represent  it,  under  the 
rule  it  went  over  and  to  the  bottom  of  the  calendar, 
killed  for  that  session  at  least. 

The  day  after  the  claimant  met  his  recreant  at 
torney  on  the  avenue  face  to  face  and  took  him  to 
task  for  his  delinquency. 

"Ah,  yes,"  said  the  great  man,  "you  are  the  little 
rascal  who  tried  to  bribe  me  the  other  day.  Here 
is  your  dirty  money.  Take  it  and  be  off  with  you. 
I  was  just  seeing  how  far  you  would  go." 

The  comment  made  by  those  who  best  knew  the 
great  man  was  that  if  instead  of  winning  in  the 
gambling  house  he  had  lost  he  would  have  been  up 
betimes  at  his  place  in  the  House,  and  doing  his 
utmost  to  pass  the  claimant's  bill  and  obtain  a  sec 
ond  fee. 

Another  memory  of  those  days  has  to  do  with 
music.  This  was  the  coming  of  Jenny  Lind  to 
America.  It  seemed  an  event.  When  she  reached 
Washington  Mr.  Barnum  asked  at  the  office  of  my 
father's  newspaper  for  a  smart  lad  to  sell  the  pro 
grams  of  the  concert — a  new  thing  in  artistic 
showmanry.  "I  don't  want  a  paper  carrier,  or  a 
[46] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

newsboy,"  said  he,  "but  a  young  gentleman,  three 
or  four  young  gentlemen."  I  was  sent  to  him.  We 
readily  agreed  upon  the  commission  to  be  received 
— five  cents  on  each  twenty-five  cent  program — 
the  oldest  of  old  men  do  not  forget  such  transac 
tions.  But,  as  an  extra  percentage  for  "organizing 
the  force,"  I  demanded  a  concert  seat.  Choice 
seats  were  going  at  a  fabulous  figure  and  Barnum 
at  first  demurred.  But  I  told  him  I  was  a  musical 
student,  stood  my  ground,  and,  perhaps  seeing 
something  unusual  in  the  eager  spirit  of  a  little  boy, 
he  gave  in  and  the  bargain  was  struck. 

Two  of  my  pals  became  my  assistants.  But  my 
sales  beat  both  of  them  hollow.  Before  the  concert 
began  I  had  sold  my  programs  and  was  in  my  seat. 
I  recall  that  my  money  profit  was  something  over 
five  dollars. 

The  bell-like  tones  of  the  Jenny  Lind  voice  in 
"Home,  Sweet  Home,"  and  "The  Last  Rose  of 
Summer"  still  come  back  to  me,  but  too  long 
after  for  me  to  make,  or  imagine,  comparisons  be 
tween  it  and  the  vocalism  of  Grisi,  Sontag  and 
Parepa-Rosa. 

Meeting  Mr.  Barnum  at  Madison  Square 
Garden  in  New  York,  when  he  was  running  one 

[47] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

of  his  entertainments  there,  I  told  him  the  story, 
and  we  had  a  hearty  laugh,  both  of  us  very  much 
pleased,  he  very  much  surprised  to  find  in  me  a 
former  employee. 

One  of  my  earliest  yearnings  was  for  a  home. 
I  cannot  recall  the  time  when  I  was  not  sick  and 
tired  of  our  migrations  between  Washington  City 
and  the  two  grand-paternal  homesteads  in  Ten 
nessee.  The  travel  counted  for  much  of  my  aver 
sion  to  the  nomadic  life  we  led.  The  stage 
coach  is  happier  in  the  contemplation  than  in  the 
actuality.  Even  when  the  railways  arrived  there 
were  no  sleeping  cars,  the  time  of  transit  three  or 
four  days  and  nights.  In  the  earlier  journeys  it 
had  been  ten  or  twelve  days. 


[48] 


CHAPTER  THE  SECOND 

SLAVERY  THE  TROUBLE-MAKER — BREAK  UP  OF  THE 

WHIG  PARTY  AND  RISE  OF  THE  REPUBLICAN 

THE    SICKLES    TRAGEDY BROOKS    AND    SUMNER 

— LIFE  AT  WASHINGTON  IN  THE  FIFTIES 


WHETHER  the  War  of  Sections  —  as  it 
should  be  called,  because,  except  in  East 
ern  Tennessee  and  in  three  of  the  Border  States, 
Maryland,  Kentucky  and  Missouri,  it  was  nowise  a 
civil  war — could  have  been  averted  must  ever  re 
main  a  question  of  useless  speculation.  In  recogniz 
ing  the  institution  of  African  slavery,  with  no  pro 
vision  for  its  ultimate  removal,  the  Federal  Union 
set  out  embodying  the  seeds  of  certain  trouble.  The 
wiser  heads  of  the  Constitutional  Convention  per 
ceived  this  plainly  enough;  its  dissonance  to  the 
logic  of  their  movement ;  on  the  sentimental  side  its 
repugnancy;  on  the  practical  side  its  doubtful 
economy;  and  but  for  the  tobacco  growers  and  the 

[49] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

cotton  planters  it  had  gone  by  the  board.  The 
North  soon  found  slave  labor  unprofitable  and  rid 
itself  of  slavery.  Thus,  restricted  to  the  South,  it 
came  to  represent  in  the  Southern  mind  a  "right" 
which  the  South  was  bound  to  defend. 

Mr.  Slidell  told  me  in  Paris  that  Louis  Napoleon 
had  once  said  to  him  in  answer  to  his  urgency  for 
the  recognition  of  the  Southern  Confederacy:  "I 
have  talked  the  matter  over  with  Lord  Palmerston 
and  we  are  both  of  the  opinion  that  as  long  as 
African  slavery  exists  at  the  South,  France  and 
England  cannot  recognize  the  Confederacy.  They 
do  not  demand  its  instant  abolition.  But  if  you 
put  it  in  course  of  abatement  and  final  abolishment 
through  a  term  of  years — I  do  not  care  how  many 
— we  can  intervene  to  some  purpose.  As  matters 
stand  we  dare  not  go  before  a  European  congress 
with  such  a  proposition." 

Mr.  Slidell  passed  it  up  to  Richmond.  Mr. 
Davis  passed  it  on  to  the  generals  in  the  field.  The 
response  he  received  on  every  hand  was  the  state 
ment  that  it  would  disorganize  and  disband  the 
Confederate  Armies.  Yet  we  are  told,  and  it  is 
doubtless  true,  that  scarcely  one  Confederate  sol 
dier  in  ten  actually  owned  a  slave. 
[50] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Thus  do  imaginings  become  theories,  and  theories 
resolve  themselves  into  claims ;  and  interests,  how 
ever  mistaken,  rise  to  the  dignity  of  prerogatives. 

II 

The  fathers  had  rather  a  hazy  view  of  the  future. 
I  was  witness  to  the  decline  and  fall  of  the  old 
Whig  Party  and  the  rise  of  the  Republican  Party. 
There  was  a  brief  lull  in  sectional  excitement  after 
the  Compromise  Measures  of  1850,  but  the  over 
whelming  defeat  of  the  Whigs  in  1852  and  the 
dominancy  of  Mr.  Jefferson  Davis  in  the  cabinet  of 
Mr.  Pierce  brought  the  agitation  back  again.  Mr. 
Davis  was  a  follower  of  Mr.  Calhoun — though  it 
may  be  doubted  whether  Mr.  Calhoun  would  ever 
have  been  willing  to  go  to  the  length  of  secession 
— and  Mr.  Pierce  being  by  temperament  a  South 
erner  as  well  as  in  opinions  a  pro-slavery  Demo 
crat,  his  Administration  fell  under  the  spell  of  the 
ultra  Southern  wing  of  the  party.  The  Kansas- 
Nebraska  Bill  was  originaly  harmless  enough,  but 
the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  which  on 
Mr.  Davis'  insistence  was  made  a  part  of  it,  let 
slip  the  dogs  of  war. 

In  Stephen  A.  Douglas  was  found  an  able  and 

[51] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

pliant  instrument.  Like  Clay,  Webster  and  Cal- 
houn  before  him,  Judge  Douglas  had  the  presi 
dential  bee  in  his  bonnet.  He  thought  the  South 
would,  as  it  could,  nominate  and  elect  him  Presi 
dent. 

Personally  he  was  a  most  lovable  man — rather 
too  convivial — and  for  a  while  in  1852  it  looked  as 
though  he  might  be  the  Democratic  nominee.  His 
candidacy  was  premature,  his  backers  overconfident 
and  indiscreet. 

"I  like  Douglas  and  am  for  him,"  said  Buck 
Stone,  a  member  of  Congress  and  delegate  to  the 
National  Democratic  Convention  from  Kentucky, 
"though  I  consider  him  a  good  deal  of  a  damn 
fool."  Pressed  for  a  reason  he  continued:  "Why, 
think  of  a  man  wanting  to  be  President  at  forty 
years  of  age,  and  obliged  to  behave  himself  for  the 
rest  of  his  life!  I  wouldn't  take  the  job  on  any 
such  terms." 

The  proposed  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Com 
promise  opened  up  the  slavery  debate  anew  and 
gave  it  increased  vitality.  Hell  literally  broke 
loose  among  the  political  elements.  The  issues 
which  had  divided  Whigs  and  Democrats  went  to 
the  rear,  while  this  one  paramount  issue  took 
[52] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

possession  of  the  stage.  It  was  welcomed  by  the 
extremists  of  both  sections,  a  very  godsend  to  the 
beaten  politicians  led  by  Mr.  Seward.  Rampant 
sectionalism  was  at  first  kept  a  little  in  the  back 
ground.  There  were  on  either  side  concealments 
and  reserves.  Many  patriotic  men  put  the  Union 
above  slavery  or  antislavery.  But  the  two  sets  of 
rival  extremists  had  their  will  at  last,  and  in  seven 
short  years  deepened  and  embittered  the  conten 
tion  to  the  degree  that  disunion  and  war  seemed, 
certainly  proved,  the  only  way  out  of  it. 

The  extravagance  of  the  debates  of  those  years 
amazes  the  modern  reader.  Occasionally  when  I 
have  occasion  to  recur  to  them  I  am  myself  non 
plussed,  for  they  did  not  sound  so  terrible  at  the 
time.  My  father  was  a  leader  of  the  Union  wing 
of  the  Democratic  Party — headed  in  1860  the 
Douglas  presidential  ticket  in  Tennessee — and  re 
mained  a  Unionist  during  the  War  of  Sections. 
He  broke  away  from  Pierce  and  retired  from  the 
editorship  of  the  Washiongton  Union  upon  the 
issue  of  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  to 
which  he  was  opposed,  refusing  the  appointment 
of  Governor  of  Oregon,  with  which  the  President 
sought  to  placate  him,  though  it  meant  his  return 

[53] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

to  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  in  a  year  or  two, 
when  he  and  Oregon's  delegate  in  Congress,  Gen. 
Joseph  Lane — the  Lane  of  the  Breckenridge  and 
Lane  ticket  of  1860 — had  brought  the  territory  of 
Oregon  in  as  a  state. 

I  have  often  thought  just  where  I  would  have 
come  in  and  what  might  have  happened  to  me  if  he 
had  accepted  the  appointment  and  I  had  grown  to 
manhood  on  the  Pacific  Coast.  As  it  was  I  at 
tended  a  school  in  Philadelphia  —  the  Protestant 
Episcopal  Academy — came  home  to  Tennessee  in 
1856,  and  after  a  season  with  private  tutors  found 
myself  back  in  the  national  capital  in  1858. 

It  was  then  that  I  began  to  nurse  some  ambitions 
of  my  own.  I  was  going  to  be  a  great  man  of  let 
ters.  I  was  going  to  write  histories  and  dramas  and 
romances  and  poetry.  But  as  I  had  set  up  for 
myself  I  felt  in  honor  bound  meanwhile  to  earn 

my  own  living. 

in 

I  take  it  that  the  early  steps  of  every  man  to 
get  a  footing  may  be  of  interest  when  fairly  told. 
I  sought  work  in  New  York  with  indifferent  suc 
cess.  Mr.  Raymond  of  the  Times,  hearing  me 
play  the  piano  at  which  from  childhood  I  had  re- 
[54] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

ceived  careful  instruction,  gave  me  a  job  as  "musi 
cal  critic"  during  the  absence  of  Mr.  Seymour,  the 
regular  critic.  I  must  have  done  my  work  ac 
ceptably,  since  I  was  not  fired.  It  included  a  re 
port  of  the  debut  of  my  boy-and-girl  companion, 
Adelina  Patti,  when  she  made  her  first  appearance 
in  opera  at  the  Academy  of  Music.  But,  as  the 
saying  is,  I  did  not  "catch  on."  There  might  be  a 
more  promising  opening  in  Washington,  and 
thither  I  repaired. 

The  Daily  States  had  been  established  there  by 
.John  P.  Heiss,  who  with  Thomas  Ritchie  had 
years  before  established  the  Washington  Union. 
Roger  A.  Pryor  was  its  nominal  editor.  But  he 
soon  took  himself  home  to  his  beloved  Virginia  and 
came  to  Congress,  and  the  editorial  writing  on  the 
Spates  was  being  done  by  Col.  A.  Dudley  Mann, 
later  along  Confederate  commissioner  to  France, 
preceding  Mr.  Slidell. 

Colonel  Mann  wished  to  work  incognito.  I  was 
taken  on  as  a  kind  of  go-between  and,  as  I  may  say, 
figurehead,  on  the  strength  of  being  my  father's 
son  and  a  very  self-confident  young  gentleman, 
and  began  to  get  my  newspaper  education  in  point 
of  fact  as  a  kind  of  fetch-and-carry  for  Major 

[55] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Heiss.  He  was  a  practical  newspaper  man  who 
had  started  the  Union  at  Nashville  as  well  as  the 
Union  at  Washington  and  the  Crescent — maybe  it 
was  the  Delta — at  New  Orleans ;  and  for  the  rudi 
ments  of  newspaper  work  I  could  scarcely  have  had 
a  better  teacher. 

Back  of  Colonel  Mann  as  a  leader  writer  on  the 
States  was  a  remarkable  woman.  She  was  Mrs. 
Jane  Casneau,  the  wife  of  Gen.  George  Casneau, 
of  Texas,  who  had  a  claim  before  Congress. 
Though  she  was  unknown  to  fame,  Thomas  A. 
Benton  used  to  say  that  she  had  more  to  do  with 
making  and  ending  the  Mexican  War  than  any 
body  else. 

Somewhere  in  the  early  thirties  she  had  gone 
with  her  newly  wedded  husband,  an  adventurous 
Yankee  by  the  name  of  Storm,  to  the  Rio  Grande 
and  started  a  settlement  they  called  Eagle  Pass. 
Storm  died,  the  Texas  outbreak  began,  and  the 
young  widow  was  driven  back  to  San  Antonio, 
where  she  met  and  married  Casneau,  one  of  Hous 
ton's  lieutenants,  like  herself  a  New  Yorker.  She 
was  sent  by  Polk  with  Pillow  and  Trist  to  the  City 
of  Mexico  and  actually  wrote  the  final  treaty.  It 
was  she  who  dubbed  William  Walker  "the  little 
[56] 


HENRY  CLAY PAIXTED  AT  ASHLAND  BY  DODGE    FOR  THE  HON. 

ANDREW  EWIXG  OF  TENNESSEE THE  ORIGINAL  HANGS  IN 

MR.  WATTERSON'S  LIBRARY  AT  "MANSFIELD" 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

gray-eyed  man  of  destiny,"  and  put  the  nickname 
"Old  Fuss  and  Feathers"  on  General  Scott,  whom 
she  heartily  disliked. 

A  braver,  more  intellectual  woman  never  lived. 
She  must  have  been  a  beauty  in  her  youth ;  was  still 
very  comely  at  fifty;  but  a  born  insurrecto  and  a 
terror  with  her  pen.  God  made  and  equipped  her 
for  a  filibuster.  She  possessed  infinite  knowledge 
of  Spanish- American  affairs,  looked  like  a  Span 
ish  woman,  and  wrote  and  spoke  the  Spanish  lan 
guage  fluently.  Her  obsession  was  the  bringing  of 
Central  America  into  the  Federal  Union.  But 
she  was  not  without  literary  aspirations  and  had 
some  literary  friends.  Among  these  was  Mrs. 
South  worth,  the  novelist,  who  had  a  lovely  home  in 
Georgetown,  and,  whatever  may  be  said  of  her 
works  and  articles,  was  a  lovely  woman.  She  used 
to  take  me  to  visit  this  lady.  With  Major  Heiss 
she  divided  my  newspaper  education,  her  part  of  it 
being  the  writing  part.  Whatever  I  may  have  at 
tained  in  that  line  I  largely  owe  to  her.  She  took 
great  pains  with  me  and  mothered  me  in  the  ab 
sence  of  my  own  mother,  who  had  long  been  her 
very  dear  friend.  To  get  rid  of  her,  or  rather  her 
pen,  Mr.  Buchanan  gave  General  Casneau,  when 

[57] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

the  Douglas  schism  was  breaking  out,  a  Central 
American  mission,  and  she  and  he  were  lost  by 
shipwreck  on  their  way  to  this  post,  somewhere  in 
Caribbean  waters. 

My  immediate  yokemate  on  the  States  was  John 
Savage,  "Jack,"  as  he  was  commonly  called;  a 
brilliant  Irishman,  who  with  Devin  Reilley  and 
John  Mitchel  and  Thomas  Francis  Meagher,  his 
intimates,  and  Joseph  Brennan,  his  brother-in-law, 
made  a  pretty  good  Irishman  of  me.  They  were 
'48  men,  with  literary  gifts  of  one  sort  and  an 
other,  who  certainly  helped  me  along  with  my  writ 
ing,  but,  as  matters  fell  out,  did  not  go  far  enough 
to  influence  my  character,  for  they  were  a  wild  lot, 
full  of  taking  enthusiasm  and  juvenile  decrepi 
tude  of  judgment,  ripe  for  adventures  and  ready 
for  any  enterprise  that  promised  fun  and  fighting. 

Between  John  Savage  and  Mrs.  Casneau  I  had 
the  constant  spur  of  commendation  and  assistance 
as  well  as  affection.  I  passed  all  my  spare  time  in 
the  Library  of  Congress  and  knew  its  arrange 
ments  at  least  as  well  as  Mr.  Meehan,  the  librarian, 
and  Robert  Kearon,  the  assistant,  much  to  the  sur 
prise  of  Mr.  Spofford,  who  in  1861  succeeded  Mr. 
Meehan  as  librarian. 
[58] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Not  long  after  my  return  to  Washington  Col. 
John  W.  Forney  picked  me  up,  and  I  was  em 
ployed  in  addition  to  my  not  very  arduous  duties 
on  the  States  to  write  occasional  letters  from  Wash 
ington  to  the  Philadelphia  Press.  Good  fortune 
like  ill  fortune  rarely  comes  singly.  Without  any 
body's  interposition  I  was  appointed  to  a  clerkship, 
a  real  "sinecure,"  in  the  Interior  Department  by 
Jacob  Thompson,  the  secretary,  my  father's  old 
colleague  in  Congress.  When  the  troubles  of 
1860-61  rose  I  was  literally  doing  "a  land-office 
business,"  with  money  galore  and  to  spare.  Some 
how,  I  don't  know  how,  I  contrived  to  spend  it, 
though  I  had  no  vices,  and  worked  like  a  hired  man 
upon  my  literary  hopes  and  newspaper  obligations. 

Life  in  Washington  under  these  conditions  was 
delightful.  I  did  not  know  how  my  heart  was 
wrapped  up  in  it  until  I  had  to  part  from  it.  My 
father  stood  high  in  public  esteem.  My  mother 
was  a  leader  in  society.  All  doors  were  open  to 
me.  I  had  many  friends.  Going  back  to  Tennessee 
in  the  midsummer  of  1861,  via  Pittsburgh  and  Cin 
cinnati,  there  happened  a  railway  break  and  a  halt 
of  several  hours  at  a  village  on  the  Ohio.  I  strolled 
down  to  the  river  and  sat  myself  upon  the  brink, 

[59] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

almost  despairing — nigh  heartbroken — when  I  be 
gan  to  feel  an  irresistible  fascination  about  the 
swift-flowing  stream.  I  leaped  to  my  feet  and  ran 
away;  and  that  is  the  only  thought  of  suicide  that 
I  can  recall. 

IV 

Mrs.  Clay,  of  Alabama,  in  her  "Belle  of  the 
Fifties"  has  given  a  graphic  picture  of  life  in  the 
national  capital  during  the  administrations  of  Pierce 
and  Buchanan.  The  South  was  very  much  in  the 
saddle.  Pierce,  as  I  have  said,  was  Southern  in 
temperament,  and  Buchanan,  who  to  those  he  did 
not  like  or  approve  had,  as  Arnold  Harris  said,  "a 
winning  way  of  making  himself  hateful,"  was  an 
aristocrat  under  Southern  and  feminine  influence. 

I  was  fond  of  Mr.  Pierce,  but  I  could  never  en 
dure  Mr.  Buchanan.  His  very  voice  gave  offense 
to  me.  Directed  by  a  periodical  publication  to 
make  a  sketch  of  him  to  accompany  an  engraving, 
I  did  my  best  on  it. 

Jacob  Thompson,  the  Secretary  of  the  Interior, 
said  to  me:  "Now,  Henry,  here's  your  chance  for 
a  foreign  appointment." 

I  now  know  that  my  writing  was  clumsy  enough 
nnd  my  attempt  to  play  the  courtier  clumsier  still. 
[60] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Nevertheless,  as  a  friend  of  my  father  and  mother 
"Old  Buck"  might  have  been  a  little  more  con 
siderate  than  he  was  with  a  lad  trying  to  please  and 
do  him  honor.  I  came  away  from  the  White  House 
my  amour  propre  wounded,  and  though  I  had  not 
far  to  go  went  straight  into  the  Douglas  camp. 

Taking  nearly  sixty  years  to  think  it  over  I  have 
reached  the  conclusion  that  Mr.  Buchanan  was  the 
victim  of  both  personal  and  historic  injustice.  With 
secession  in  sight  his  one  aim  was  to  get  out  of  the 
White  House  before  the  scrap  began.  He  was  of 
course  on  terms  of  intimacy  with  all  the  secession 
leaders,  especially  Mr.  Slidell,  of  Louisiana,  like 
himself  a  Northerner  by  birth,  and  Mr.  Mason,  a 
thick-skulled,  ruffle-shirted  Virginian.  It  was  not 
in  him  or  in  Mr.  Pierce,  with  their  antecedents  and 
associations,  to  be  uncompromising  Federalists. 
There  was  no  clear  law  to  go  on.  Moderate  men 
were  in  a  muck  of  doubt  just  what  to  do.  With 
Horace  Greeley  Mr.  Buchanan  was  ready  to  say 
"Let  the  erring  sisters  go."  This  indeed  was  the 
extent  of  Mr.  Pierce's  pacifism  during  the  War  of 
Sections. 

A  new  party  risen  upon  the  remains  of  the  Whig 
Party — the  Republican  Party — was  at  the  door 

[61] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

and  coming  into  power.  Lifelong  pro-slavery 
Democrats  could  not  look  on  with  equanimity,  still 
less  with  complaisance,  and  doubtless  Pierce  and 
Buchanan  to  the  end  of  their  days  thought  less  of 
the  Republicans  than  of  the  Confederates.  As  a 
consequence  Republican  writers  have  given  quarter 
to  neither  of  them. 

It  will  not  do  to  go  too  deeply  into  the  account 
of  those  days.  The  times  were  out  of  joint.  I 
knew  of  two  Confederate  generals  who  first  tried 
for  commissions  in  the  Union  Army;  gallant  and 
good  fellows  too ;  but  they  are  both  dead  and  their 
secret  shall  die  with  me.  I  knew  likewise  a  famous 
Union  general  who  was  about  to  resign  his  com 
mission  in  the  army  to  go  with  the  South  but  was 
prevented  by  his  wife,  a  Northern  woman,  who  had 
obtained  of  Mr.  Lincoln  a  brigadier's  commission. 


In  1858  a  wonderful  affair  came  to  pass.  It  was 
Mrs.  Senator  Gwin's  fancy  dress  ba1!,  written  of, 
talked  of,  far  and  wide.  I  did  not  get  to  attend 
this.  My  costume  was  prepared — a  Spanish 
cavalier,  Mrs.  Casneau's  doing — when  I  fell  ill  and 
had  with  bitter  disappointment  to  read  about  it 
[62] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

next  day  in  the  papers.  I  was  living  at  Willard's 
Hotel,  and  one  of  my  volunteer  nurses  was  Mrs. 
Daniel  E.  Sickles,  a  pretty  young  thing  who  was 
soon  to  become  the  victim  of  a  murder  and  world 
scandal.  Her  husband  was  a  member  of  the  House 
from  New  York,  and  during  his  frequent  absences 
I  used  to  take  her  to  dinner.  Mr.  Sickles  had  been 
Mr.  Buchanan's  Secretary  of  Legation  in  London, 
and  both  she  and  he  were  at  home  in  the  White 
House. 

She  was  an  innocent  child.  She  never  knew  what 
she  was  doing,  and  when  a  year  later  Sickles,  hav 
ing  killed  her  seducer — a  handsome,  unscrupulous 
fellow  who  understood  how  to  take  advantage  of 
a  husband's  neglect — forgave  her  and  brought  her 
home  in  the  face  of  much  obloquy,  in  my  heart  of 
hearts  I  did  homage  to  his  courage  and  generosity, 
for  she  was  then  as  he  and  I  both  knew  a  dying 
woman.  She  did  die  but  a  few  months  later.  He 
was  by  no  means  a  politician  after  my  fancy  or 
approval,  but  to  the  end  of  his  days  I  was  his  friend 
and  could  never  bring  myself  to  join  in  the  re 
peated  public  outcries  against  him. 

Early  in  the  fifties  Willard's  Hotel  became  a 
kind  of  headquarters  for  the  two  political  extremes. 

[63] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

During  a  long  time  their  social  intercourse  was  un 
restrained — often  joyous.  They  were  too  far 
apart,  figuratively  speaking,  to  come  to  blows. 
Truth  to  say,  their  aims  were  after  all  not  so  far 
apart.  They  played  to  one  another's  lead.  Many 
a  time  have  I  seen  Keitt,  of  South  Carolina,  and 
Burlingame,  of  Massachusetts,  hobnob  in  the  live 
liest  manner  and  most  public  places. 

It  is  certainly  true  that  Brooks  was  not  him 
self  when  he  attacked  Sumner.  The  Northern 
radicals  were  wont  to  say,  "Let  the  South  go,"  the 
more  profane  among  them  interjecting  "to  hell!" 
The  Secessionists  liked  to  prod  the  New  England- 
ers  with  what  the  South  was  going  to  do  when  they 
got  to  Boston.  None  of  them  really  meant  it — 
not  even  Toombs  when  he  talked  about  calling  the 
muster  roll  of  his  slaves  beneath  Bunker  Hill 
Monument;  nor  Hammond,  the  son  of  a  New  Eng 
land  schoolmaster,  when  he  spoke  of  the  "mudsills 
of  the  North,"  meaning  to  illustrate  what  he  was 
saying  by  the  underpinning  of  a  house  built  on 
marshy  ground,  and  not  the  Northern  work  people. 

Toombs,  who  was  a  rich  man,  not  quite  impover 
ished  by  the  war,  banished  himself  in  Europe  for  a 
number  of  years.  At  length  he  came  home,  and 
[64] 


W.  P.   HARDEE,  LIEUTENANT  GENERAL  C.  S.  A. 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

passing  the  White  House  at  Washington  he  called 
and  sent  his  card  to  the  President.  General  Grant, 
the  most  genial  and  generous  of  men,  had  him  come 
directly  up. 

"Mr.  President,"  said  Toombs,  "in  my  European 
migrations  I  have  made  it  a  rule  when  arriving  in 
a  city  to  call  first  and  pay  my  respects  to  the  Chief 
of  Police." 

The  result  was  a  most  agreeable  hour  and  an  in 
vitation  to  dinner.  Not  long  after  this  at  the  hos 
pitable  board  of  a  Confederate  general,  then  an 
American  senator,  Toombs  began  to  prod  Lamar 
about  his  speech  in  the  House  upon  the  occasion  of 
the  death  of  Charles  Sumner.  Lamar  was  not  quick 
to  quarrel,  though  when  aroused  a  man  of  devilish 
temper  and  courage.  The  subject  had  become  dis 
tasteful  to  him.  He  was  growing  obviously  restive 
under  Toombs'  banter.  The  ladies  of  the  house 
hold  apprehending  what  was  coming  left  the  table. 

Then  Lamar  broke  forth.  He  put  Toombs'  visit 
to  Grant,  "crawling  at  the  seat  of  power,"  against 
his  eulogy  of  a  dead  enemy.  I  have  never  heard 
such  a  scoring  from  one  man  to  another.  It  was 
magisterial  in  its  dignity,  deadly  in  its  diction. 
Nothing  short  of  a  duel  could  have  settled  it  in  the 

[65] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

olden  time.  But  when  Lamar,  white  with  rage, 
had  finished,  Toombs  without  a  ruffle  said,  "Lamar, 
you  surprise  me,"  and  the  host,  with  the  rest  of  us, 
took  it  as  a  signal  to  rise  from  table  and  rejoin  the 
ladies  in  the  drawing-room.  Of  course  nothing 
came  of  it. 

Toombs  was  as  much  a  humorist  as  an  extremist. 
I  have  ridden  with  him  under  fire  and  heard  him 
crack  jokes  with  Minie  balls  flying  uncomfortably 
about.  Some  one  spoke  kindly  of  him  to  old  Ben 
Wade.  "Yes,  yes,"  said  Wade;  "I  never  did  be 
lieve  in  the  doctrine  of  total  depravity." 

But  I  am  running  ahead  in  advance  of  events. 

VI 

There  came  in  1853  to  the  Thirty-third  Congress 
a  youngish,  dapper  and  graceful  man  notable  as 
the  only  Democrat  in  the  Massachusetts  delegation. 
It  was  said  that  he  had  been  a  dancing  master,  his 
wife  a  work  girl.  They  brought  with  them  a  baby 
in  arms  with  the  wife's  sister  for  its  nurse — a  mis 
step  which  was  quickly  corrected.  I  cannot  now 
tell  just  how  I  came  to  be  very  intimate  with  them 
except  that  they  lived  at  Willard's  Hotel.  His 
[66] 


'MARSE  HENRY" 

name  had  a  pretty  sound  to  it — Nathaniel  Prentiss 
Banks. 

A  schoolmate  of  mine  and  myself,  greatly  to  the 
mirth  of  those  about  us,  undertook  Mr.  Banks' 
career.  .  We  were  going  to  elect  him  Speaker  of 
the  next  House  and  then  President  of  the  United 
States.  This  was  particularly  laughable  to  my 
mother  and  Mrs.  Linn  Boyd,  the  wife  of  the  con 
temporary  Speaker,  who  had  very  solid  presidential 
aspirations  of  his  own. 

The  suggestion  perhaps  originated  with  Mrs. 
Banks,  to  whom  we  two  were  ardently  devoted.  I 
have  not  seen  her  since  those  days,  more  than  sixty 
years  ago.  But  her  beauty,  which  then  charmed 
me,  still  lingers  in  my  memory  —  a  gentle,  sweet 
creature  who  made  much  of  us  boys — and  two 
years  later  when  Mr.  Banks  was  actually  elected 
Speaker  I  was  greatly  elated  and  took  some  of 
the  credit  to  myself.  Twenty  years  afterwards 
General  Banks  and  I  had  our  seats  close  together 
in  the  Forty-fourth  Congress,  and  he  did  not  re 
call  me  at  all  or  the  episode  of  1853.  Nevertheless 
I  warmed  to  him,  and  when  during  Cleveland's  first 
term  he  came  to  me  with  a  hard-luck  story  I  was 
glad  to  throw  myself  into  the  breach.  He  had  been 

[67] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

a  Speaker  of  the  House,  a  general  in  the  field  and 
a  Governor  of  Massachusetts,  but  was  a  faded  old 
man,  very  commonplace,  and  except  for  the  little 
post  he  held  under  Government  pitiably  helpless. 

Colonel  George  Walton  was  one  of  my  father's 
intimates  and  an  imposing  and  familiar  figure 
about  Washington.  He  was  the  son  of  a  signer  of 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  a  distinction  in 
those  days,  had  been  mayor  of  Mobile  and  was  an 
unending  raconteur.  To  my  childish  mind  he  ap 
peared  to  know  everything  that  ever  had  been  or 
ever  would  be.  He  would  tell  me  stories  by  the 
hour  and  send  me  to  buy  him  lottery  tickets.  I 
afterward  learned  that  that  form  of  gambling  was 
his  mania.  I  also  learned  that  many  of  his  stories 
were  apocryphal  or  very  highly  colored. 

One  of  these  stories  especially  took  me.  It  re* 
lated  how  when  he  was  on  a  yachting  cruise  in  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico  the  boat  was  overhauled  by  pirates, 
and  how  he  being  the  likeliest  of  the  company  was 
tied  up  and  whipped  to  make  him  disgorge,  or  tell 
where  the  treasure  was. 

"Colonel  Walton,"  said  I,  "did  the  whipping 
hurt  you  much?" 
[68] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

"Sir,"  he  replied,  as  if  I  were  a  grown-up,  "they 
whipped  me  until  I  was  perfectly  disgusted." 

An  old  lady  in  Philadelphia,  whilst  I  was  at 
school,  heard  me  mention  Colonel  Walton — a  most 
distinguished,  religious  old  lady — and  said  to  me, 
"Henry,  my  son,  you  should  be  ashamed  to  speak 
of  that  old  villain  or  confess  that  you  ever  knew 
him,"  proceeding  to  give  me  his  awful,  blood-cur 
dling  history. 

It  was  mainly  a  figment  of  her  fancy  and 
prejudice,  and  I  repeated  it  to  Colonel  Walton  the 
next  time  I  went  to  the  hotel  where  he  was  then 
living — I  have  since  learned,  with  a  lady  not  his 
wife,  though  he  was  then  three  score  and  ten — and 
he  cried,  "That  old  hag!  Good  Lord!  Don't  they 
ever  die!" 

Seeing  every  day  the  most  distinguished  public 
men  of  the  country,  and  with  many  of  them  brought 
into  direct  acquaintance  by  the  easy  intercourse  of 
hotel  life,  destroyed  any  reverence  I  might  have 
acquired  for  official  station.  Familiarity  may  not 
always  breed  contempt,  but  it  is  a  veritable  eye 
opener.  To  me  no  divinity  hedged  the  brow  of  a 
senator.  I  knew  the  White  House  too  well  to  be 

[69] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

impressed  by  its  architectural  grandeur  without  and 
rather  bizarre  furnishments  within. 

ira 

I  have  declaimed  not  a  little  in  my  time  about 
the  ignoble  trade  of  politics,  the  collective  dis,- 
honesty  of  parties  and  the  vulgarities  of  the  self- 
exploiting  professional  office  hunters.  Parties  are 
parties.  Professional  politics  and  politicians  are 
probably  neither  worse  nor  better — barring  their 
pretensions — than  other  lines  of  human  endeavor. 
The  play  actor  must  be  agreeable  on  the  stage  of 
the  playhouse;  the  politician  on  the  highways  and 
the  hustings,  which  constitute  his  playhouse — all 
the  world  a  stage — neither  to  be  seriously  blamed 
for  the  dissimulation  which,  being  an  asset,  be 
comes,  as  it  were,  a  second  nature. 

The  men  who  between  1850  and  1861  might  have 
saved  the  Union  and  averted  the  War  of  Sections 
were  on  either  side  professional  politicians,  with 
here  and  there  an  unselfish,  far-seeing,  patriotic 
man,  whose  admonitions  were  not  heeded  by  the 
people  ranging  on  opposing  sides  of  party  lines. 
The  two  most  potential  of  the  party  leaders  were 
Mr.  Davis  and  Mr.  Seward.  The  South  might 
[70] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

have  seen  and  known  that  the  one  hope  of  the  in 
stitution  of  slavery  lay  in  the  Union.  However  it 
ended,  disunion  led  to  abolition.  The  world — the 
whole  trend  of  modern  thought — was  set  against 
slavery.  But  politics,  based  on  party  feeling,  is  a 
game  of  blindman's  buff .  And  then — here  I  show 
myself  a  son  of  Scotland — there  is  a  destiny. 
"What  is  to  be,"  says  the  predestinarian  Mother 
Goose,  "will  be,  though  it  never  come  to  pass." 

That  was  surely  the  logic  of  the  irrepressible  con 
flict — only  it  did  come  to  pass — and  for  four  years 
millions  of  people,  the  most  homogeneous,  practical 
and  intelligent,  fought  to  a  finish  a  fight  over  a 
quiddity;  both  devoted  to  liberty,  order  and  law, 
neither  seeking  any  real  change  in  the  character  of 
its  organic  contract. 

Human  nature  remains  ever  the  same.  These 
days  are  very  like  those  days.  We  have  had  fifty 
years  of  a  restored  Union.  The  sectional  fires 
have  quite  gone  out.  Yet  behold  the  schemes  of 
revolution  claiming  the  regenerative.  Most  of 
them  call  themselves  the  "uplift!" 

Let  us  agree  at  once  that  all  government  is  more 
or  less  a  failure;  society  as  fraudulent  as  the  satir 
ists  describe  it;  yet,  when  we  turn  to  the  uplift — 

[71] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

particularly  the  professional  uplift — what  do  we 
find  but  the  same  old  tunes,  hypocrisy  and  empiri 
cism  posing  as  "friends  of  the  people,"  preaching 
the  pussy  gospel  of  "sweetness  and  light?" 

"Words,  words,  words,"  says  Hamlet.  Even  as 
veteran  writers  for  the  press  have  come  through 
disheartening  experience  to  a  realizing  sense  of  the 
futility  of  printer's  ink  must  our  academic  pundits 
begin  to  suspect  the  futility  of  art  and  letters. 
Words  however  cleverly  writ  on  paper  are  after 
all  but  words.  "In  a  nation  of  blind  men,"  we  are 
told,  "the  one-eyed  man  is  king."  In  a  nation  of 
undiscriminating  voters  the  noise  of  the  agitator  is 
apt  to  drown  the  voice  of  the  statesman.  We  have 
been  teaching  everybody  to  read,  nobody  to  think ; 
and  as  a  consequence — the  rule  of  numbers  the 
law  of  the  land,  partyism  in  the  saddle — legisla 
tion,  state  and  Federal,  becomes  largely  a  matter 
of  riding  to  hounds  and  horns.  All  this,  which 
was  true  in  the  fifties,  is  true  to-day. 

Under  the  pretense  of  "liberalizing"  the  Gov 
ernment  the  politicians  are  sacrificing  its  organic 
character  to  whimsical  experimentation;  its  checks 
and  balances  wisely  designed  to  promote  and  pro 
tect  liberty  are  being  loosened  by  schemes  of  re- 
[72] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

form  more  or  less  visionary;  while  nowhere  do  we 
find  intelligence  enlightened  by  experience,  and 
conviction  supported  by  self-control,  interposing 
to  save  the  representative  system  of  the  Constitu 
tion  from  the  onward  march  of  the  proletariat. 

One  cynic  tells  us  that  "A  statesman  is  a  politi 
cian  who  is  dead,"  and  another  cynic  varies  the 
epigram  to  read  "A  politician  out  of  a  job."  Pa 
triotism  cries  "God  give  us  men,"  but  the  parties 
say  "Give  us  votes  and  offices,"  and  Congress  pro 
ceeds  to  create  a  commission.  Thus  responsibilities 
are  shirked  and  places  are  multiplied. 

Assuming,  since  many  do,  that  the  life  of  nations 
is  mortal  even  as  is  the  life  of  man — in  all  things 
of  growth  and  decline  assimilating — has  not  our 
world  reached  the  top  of  the  acclivity,  and  pausing 
for  a  moment  may  it  not  be  about  to  take  the  down 
ward  course  into  another  abyss  of  collapse  and 
oblivion? 

The  miracles  of  electricity  the  last  word  of 
science,  what  is  left  for  man  to  do?  With  wireless 
telegraphy,  the  airplane  and  the  automobile  annihi 
lating  time  and  space,  what  else  ?  Turning  from  the 
material  to  the  ethical  it  seems  of  the  very  nature 
of  the  human  species  to  meddle  and  muddle.  On 

[73] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

every  hand  we  see  the  organization  of  societies  for 
making  men  and  women  over  again  according  to 
certain  fantastic  images  existing  in  the  minds  of 
the  promoters.  (fMon  Dieu!"  exclaimed  the  visit 
ing  Frenchman.  "Fifty  religions  and  only  one 
soup !"  Since  then  both  the  soups  and  the  religions 
have  multiplied  until  there  is  scarce  a  culinary  or 
moral  conception  which  has  not  some  sect  or  club  to 
represent  it.  The  uplift  is  the  keynote  of  these. 


[74] 


CHAPTER  THE  THIRD 

THE  INAUGURATION  OF  LINCOLN — I  QUIT  WASHING 
TON  AND  RETURN  TO  TENNESSEE A  RUN 
ABOUT  WITH  FORREST THROUGH  THE  FEDERAL 

LINES    AND    A    DANGEROUS    ADVENTURE GOOD 

LUCK  AT  MEMPHIS 


IT  MAY  have  been  Louis  the  Fifteenth,  or  it 
may  have  been  Madame  de  Pompadour,  who 
said,  "After  me  the  deluge;"  but  whichever  it  was, 
very  much  that  thought  was  in  Mr.  Buchanan's 
mind  in  1861  as  the  time  for  his  exit  from  the  White 
House  approached.  At  the  North  there  had  been 
a  political  ground-swell;  at  the  South,  secession, 
half  accomplished  by  the  Gulf  States,  yawned  in 
the  Border  States.  Curiously  enough,  very  few  be 
lieved  that  war  was  imminent. 

As  a  reporter  for  the  States  I  met  Mr.  Lincoln 
immediately  on  his  arrival  in  Washington.  He 
came  in  unexpectedly  ahead  of  the  hour  announced, 
to  escape,  as  was  given  out,  a  well-laid  plan  to 

[75] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

assassinate  him  as  he  passed  through  Baltimore.  I 
did  not  believe  at  the  time,  and  I  do  not  believe 
now,  that  there  was  any  real  ground  for  this  ap 
prehension. 

All  through  that  winter  there  had  been  a  deal  of 
wild  talk.  One  story  had  it  that  Mr.  Buchanan  was 
to  be  kidnapped  and  made  off  with  so  that  Vice 
President  Breckenridge  might  succeed  and,  acting 
as  de  facto  President,  throw  the  country  into  con 
fusion  and  revolution,  defeating  the  inauguration 
of  Lincoln  and  the  coming  in  of  the  Republicans. 
It  was  a  figment  of  drink  and  fancy.  There  was 
never  any  such  scheme.  If  there  had  been  Breck 
enridge  would  not  have  consented  to  be  party  to  it. 
He  was  a  man  of  unusual  mental  as  well  as  per 
sonal  dignity  and  both  temperamentally  and  in 
tellectually  a  thorough  conservative. 

I  had  been  engaged  by  Mr.  L.  A.  Gobright,  the 
agent  of  what  became  later  the  Associated  Press, 
to  help  with  the  report  of  the  inauguration  cere 
monies  the  4th  of  March,  1861,  and  in  the  discharge 
of  this  duty  I  kept  as  close  to  Mr.  Lincoln  as  I 
cduld  get,  following  after  him  from  the  senate 
chamber  to  the  east  portico  of  the  capitol  and  stand- 
[76] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

ing  by  his  side  whilst  he  delivered  his  inaugural 
address. 

Perhaps  I  shall  not  be  deemed  prolix  if  I  dwell 
with  some  particularity  upon  an  occasion  so  his 
toric.  I  had  first  encountered  the  newly  elected 
President  the  afternoon  of  the  day  in  the  early 
morning  of  which  he  had  arrived  in  Washington. 
It  was  a  Saturday,  I  think.  He  came  to  the  capitol 
under  the  escort  of  Mr.  Seward,  and  among  the 
rest  I  was  presented  to  him.  His  appearance  did 
not  impress  me  as  fantastically  as  it  had  impressed 
some  others.  I  was  familiar  with  the  Western 
type,  and  whilst  Mr.  Lincoln  was  not  an  Adonis, 
even  after  prairie  ideals,  there  was  about  him  a 
dignity  that  commanded  respect. 

I  met  him  again  the  next  Monday  forenoon  in 
his  apartment  at  Willard's  Hotel  as  he  was  pre 
paring  to  start  to  his  inauguration,  and  was  struck 
by  his  unaffected  kindness,  for  I  came  with  a  mat 
ter  requiring  his  attention.  This  was,  in  point  of 
fact,  to  get  from  him  a  copy  of  the  inauguration 
speech  for  the  Associated  Press.  I  turned  it  over 
to  Ben  Perley  Poore,  who,  like  myself,  was  assist 
ing  Mr.  Gobright.  The  President  that  was  about 
to  be  seemed  entirely  self-possessed;  not  a  sign  of 

[77] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

nervousness,  and  very  obliging.  As  I  have  said,  I 
accompanied  the  cortege  that  passed  from  the  sen 
ate  chamber  to  the  east  portico.  When  Mr.  Lin 
coln  removed  his  hat  to  face  the  vast  throng  in 
front  and  below,  I  extended  my  hand  to  take  it, 
but  Judge  Douglas,  just  behind  me,  reached  over 
my  outstretched  arm  and  received  it,  holding  it 
during  the  delivery  of  the  address.  I  stood  just 
near  enough  the  speaker's  elbow  not  to  obstruct 
any  gestures  he  might  make,  though  he  made  but 
few;  and  then  I  began  to  get  a  suspicion  of  the 
power  of  the  man. 

He  delivered  that  inaugural  address  as  if  he  had 
been  delivering  inaugural  addresses  all  his  life. 
Firm,  resonant,  earnest,  it  announced  the  coming 
of  a  man,  of  a  leader  of  men;  and  in  its  tone  and 
style  the  gentlemen  whom  he  had  invited  to  become 
members  of  his  political  family — each  of  whom 
thought  himself  a  bigger  man  than  his  chief — might 
have  heard  the  voice  and  seen  the  hand  of  one  born 
to  rule.  Whether  they  did  or  not,  they  very  soon 
ascertained  the  fact.  From  the  hour  Abraham  Lin 
coln  crossed  the  threshold  of  the  White  House  to 
the  hour  he  went  thence  to  his  death,  there  was  not 
a  moment  when  he  did  not  dominate  the  political 
[T8] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

and  military  situation  and  his  official  subordinates. 
The  idea  that  he  was  overtopped  at  any  time  by 
anybody  is  contradicted  by  all  that  actually  hap 
pened. 

I  was  a  young  Democrat  and  of  course  not  in 
sympathy  with  Mr.  Lincoln  or  his  opinions.  Judge 
Douglas,  however,  had  taken  the  edge  off  my 
hostility.  He  had  said  to  me  upon  his  return  in 
triumph  to  Washington  after  the  famous  Illinois 
campaign  of  1868 :  "Lincoln  is  a  good  man ;  in  fact, 
a  great  man,  and  by  far  the  ablest  debater  I  have 
ever  met,"  and  now  the  newcomer  began  to  verify 
this  opinion  both  in  his  private  conversation  and  in 
his  public  attitude. 

n 

I  had  been  an  undoubting  Union  boy.  Neither 
then  nor  afterward  could  I  be  fairly  classified  as  a 
Secessionist.  Circumstance  rather  than  convic 
tion  or  predilection  threw  me  into  the  Confederate 
service,  and,  being  in,  I  went  through  with  it. 

The  secession  leaders  I  held  in  distrust ;  especially 
Yancey,  Mason,  Slidell,  Benjamin  and  Iverson, 
Jefferson  Davis  and  Isham  G.  Harris  were  not 
favorites  of  mine.  Later  along  I  came  into  familiar 

[79] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

association  with  most  of  them,  and  relations  were 
established  which  may  be  described  as  confidential 
and  affectionate.  Lamar  and  I  were  brought  to 
gether  oddly  enough  in  1869  by  Carl  Schurz,  and 
thenceforward  we  were  the  most  devoted  friends. 
Harris  and  I  fell  together  in  1862  in  the  field,  first 
with  Forrest  and  later  with  Johnston  and  Hood, 
and  we  remained  as  brothers  to  the  end,  when  he 
closed  a  great  career  in  the  upper  house  of  Con 
gress,  and  by  Republican  votes,  though  he  was  a 
Democrat,  as  president  of  the  Senate. 

He  continued  in  the  Governorship  of  Tennessee 
through  the  war.  He  at  no  time  lost  touch  with 
the  Tennessee  troops,  and  though  not  always  in  the 
field,  never  missed  a  forward  movement.  In 
the  early  spring  of  1864,  just  before  the  famous 
Johnston- Sherman  campaign  opened,  General 
Johnston  asked  him  to  go  around  among  the  boys 
and  "stir  'em  up  a  bit."  The  Governor  invited  me 
to  ride  with  him.  Together  we  visited  every  sector 
in  the  army.  Threading  the  woods  of  North 
Georgia  on  this  round,  if  I  heard  it  once  I  heard  it 
fifty  times  shouted  from  a  distant  clearing:  "Here 
comes  Gov-ner  Harris,  fellows;  g'wine  to  be  a 
fight."  His  appearance  at  the  front  had  always 
[80] 


JOHN   BELL  OF  TENNESSEE — IN    1860   PRESIDENTIAL 
CANDIDATE    "UNION    PARTY" "BELL    AND    EVERETT^    TICKET 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

preceded  and  been  long  ago  taken  as  a  signal  for 
battle. 

My  being  a  Washington  correspondent  of  the 

Philadelphia  Press  and  having  lived  since  childhood 
at  Willard's  Hotel,  where  the  Camerons  also  lived, 
will  furnish  the  key  to  my  becoming  an  actual  and 
active  rebel.  A  few  days  after  the  inauguration  of 
Mr.  Lincoln,  Colonel  Forney  came  to  my  quarters 
and,  having  passed  the  time  of  day,  said:  "The 
Secretary  of  War  wishes  you  to  be  at  the  depart 
ment  to-morrow  morning  as  near  nine  o'clock  as 
you  can  make  it." 

"What  does  he  want,  Colonel  Forney?"  I  asked. 

"He  is  going  to  offer  you  the  position  of  private 
secretary  to  the  Secretary  of  War,  with  the  rank 
of  lieutenant  colonel,  and  I  am  very  desirous  that 
you  accept  it." 

He  went  away  leaving  me  rather  upset.  I  did 
not  sleep  very  soundly  that  night.  "So,"  I  argued 
to  myself,  "it  has  come  to  this,  that  Forney  and 
Cameron,  lifelong  enemies,  have  made  friends  and 
are  going  to  rob  the  Government — one  clerk  of  the 
House,  the  other  Secretary  of  War — and  I,  a 
mutual  choice,  am  to  be  the  confidential  middle 

[81] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

man."  I  still  had  a  home  in  Tennessee  and  I  rose 
from  my  bed,  resolved  to  go  there. 

I  did  not  keep  the  proposed  appointment  for 
next  day.  As  soon  as  I  could  make  arrangements 
I  quitted  Washington  and  went  to  Tennessee,  still 
unchanged  in  my  preconceptions.  I  may  add,  since 
they  were  verified  by  events,  that  I  have  not  modi 
fied  them  from  that  day  to  this. 

I  could  not  wholly  believe  with  either  extreme. 
I  had  perpetrated  no  wrong,  but  in  my  small  way 
had  done  my  best  for  the  Union  and  against  seces 
sion.  I  would  go  back  to  my  books  and  my  literary 
ambitions  and  let  the  storm  blow  over.  It  could 
not  last  very  long;  the  odds  against  the  South  were 
too  great.  Vain  hope!  As  well  expect  a  chip  on 
the  surface  of  the  ocean  to  lie  quiet  as  a  lad  of 
twenty-one  in  those  days  to  keep  out  of  one  or  the 
other  camp.  On  reaching  home  I  found  myself 
alone.  The  boys  were  all  gone  to  the  front.  The 
girls  were — well,  they  were  all  crazy.  My  native 
country  was  about  to  be  invaded.  Propinquity. 
Sympathy.  So,  casting  opinions  to  the  winds  in  I 
went  on  feeling.  And  that  is  how  I  became  a  rebel, 
a  case  of  "first  endure  and  then  embrace,"  because 
I  soon  got  to  be  a  pretty  good  rebel  and  went  the 
[82] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

limit,  changing  my  coat  as  it  were,  though  not  my 
better  judgment,  for  with  a  gray  jacket  on  my 
back  and  ready  to  do  or  die,  I  retained  my  belief 
that  secession  was  treason,  that  disunion  was  the 
height  of  folly  and  that  the  South  was  bound  to  go 
down  in  the  unequal  strife. 

I  think  now,  as  an  academic  proposition,  that,  in 
the  doctrine  of  secession,  the  secession  leaders  had 
a  debatable,  if  not  a  logical  case;  but  I  also  think 
that  if  the  Gulf  States  had  been  allowed  to  go  out 
by  tacit  consent  they  would  very  soon  have  been 
back  again  seeking  readmission  to  the  Union. 

Man  proposes  and  God  disposes.  The  ways  of 
Deity  to  man  are  indeed  past  finding  out.  Why,  the 
long  and  dreadful  struggle  of  a  kindred  people, 
the  awful  bloodshed  and  havoc  of  four  weary  years, 
leaving  us  at  the  close  measurably  where  we  were 
at  the  beginning,  is  one  of  the  mysteries  which 
should  prove  to  us  that  there  is  a  world  hereafter, 
since  no  great  creative  principle  could  produce  one 
with  so  dire,  with  so  short  a  span  and  nothing  be 
yond. 

in 

The  change  of  parties  wrought  by  the  presiden 
tial  election  of  1860  and  completed  by  the  coming 

[83] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

in  of  the  Republicans  in  1861  was  Indeed  revolu 
tionary.  When  Mr.  Lincoln  had  finished  his 
inaugural  address  and  the  crowd  on  the  east  portico 
began  to  disperse,  I  reentered  the  rotunda  between 
Mr.  Reverdy  Johnson,  of  Maryland,  and  Mr.  John 
Bell,  of  Tennessee,  two  old  friends  of  my  family, 
and  for  a  little  we  sat  upon  a  bench,  they  discussing 
the  speech  we  had  just  heard. 

Both  were  sure  there  would  be  no  war.  All 
would  be  well,  they  thought,  each  speaking  kindly 
of  Mr.  Lincoln.  They  were  among  the  most 
eminent  men  of  the  time,  I  a  boy  of  twenty-one; 
but  to  me  war  seemed  a  certainty.  Recalling  the 
episode,  I  have  often  realized  how  the  intuitions  of 
youth  outwit  the  wisdom  and  baffle  the  experience 
of  age. 

I  at  once  resigned  my  snug  sinecure  in  the  In 
terior  Department  and,  closing  my  accounts  of 
every  sort,  was  presently  ready  to  turn  my  back 
upon  Washington  and  seek  adventures  elsewhere. 

They  met  me  halfway  and  came  in  plenty.  I 
tried  staff  duty  with  General  Polk,  who  was  mak 
ing  an  expedition  into  Western  Kentucky.  In  a 
few  weeks  illness  drove  me  into  Nashville,  where  I 
passed  the  next  winter  in  desultory  newspaper 
[84] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

work.  Then  Nashville  fell,  and,  as  I  was  making 
my  way  out  of  town  afoot  and  trudging  the  Mur- 
freesboro  pike,  Forrest,  with  his  squadron  just  es 
caped  from  Fort  Donelson,  came  thundering  by, 
and  I  leaped  into  an  empty  saddle.  A  few  days 
later  Forrest,  promoted  to  brigadier  general,  at 
tached  me  to  his  staff,  and  the  next  six  months  it 
was  mainly  guerilla  service,  very  much  to  my  liking. 
But  Fate,  if  not  Nature,  had  decided  that  I  was  a 
better  writer  than  fighter,  and  the  Bank  of  Ten 
nessee  having  bought  a  newspaper  outfit  at  Chatta 
nooga,  I  was  sent  there  to  edit  The  Rebel — my  own 
naming — established  as  the  organ  of  the  Tennessee 
state  government.  I  made  it  the  organ  of  the 
army. 

It  is  not  the  purpose  of  these  pages  to  retell  the 
well-known  story  of  the  war.  My  life  became  a 
series  of  ups  and  downs — mainly  downs — the  word 
being  from  day  to  day  to  fire  and  fall  back;  in 
the  Johnston- Sherman  campaign,  I  served  as 
chief  of  scouts;  then  as  an  aid  to  General  Hood 
through  the  siege  of  Atlanta,  sharing  the  beginning 
of  the  chapter  of  disasters  that  befell  that  gallant 
soldier  and  his  army.  I  was  spared  the  last  and 
worst  of  these  by  a  curious  piece  of  special  duty, 

[85] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

taking  me  elsewhere,  to  which  I  was  assigned  in 
the  autumn  of  1864  by  the  Confederate  govern 
ment. 

This  involved  a  foreign  journey.  It  was  no 
less  than  to  go  to  England  to  sell  to  English  buy 
ers  some  hundred  thousand  bales  of  designated  cot 
ton  to  be  thus  rescued  from  spoilation,  acting  under 
the  supervision  and  indeed  the  orders  of  the  Con 
federate  fiscal  agency  at  Liverpool. 

Of  course  I  was  ripe  for  this;  but  it  proved  a 
bigger  job  than  I  had  conceived  or  dreamed.  The 
initial  step  was  to  get  out  of  the  country.  But 
how?  That  was  the  question.  To  run  the  blockade 
had  been  easy  enough  a  few  months  earlier.  All 
our  ports  were  now  sealed  by  Federal  cruisers  and 
gunboats.  There  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  slip 
through  the  North  and  to  get  either  a  New  York  or 
a  Canadian  boat.  This  involved  chances  and  dis 
guises. 

IV 

In  West  Tennessee,  not  far  from  Memphis, 
lived  an  aunt  of  mine.  Thither  I  repaired.  My 
plan  was  to  get  on  a  Mississippi  steamer  calling  at 
one  of  the  landings  for  wood.  This  proved  im 
practicable.  I  wandered  many  days  and  nights, 
[86] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

rather  ill  mounted,  in  search  of  some  kind — any 
kind — of  exit,  when  one  afternoon,  quite  worn  out, 
I  sat  by  a  log  heap  in  a  comfortable  farmhouse.  It 
seemed  that  I  was  at  the  end  of  my  tether;  I  did 
not  know  what  to  do. 

Presently  there  was  an  arrival — a  brisk  gentle 
man  right  out  of  Memphis,  which  I  then  learned 
was  only  ten  miles  distant — bringing  with  him  a 
morning  paper.  In  this  I  saw  appended  to  various 
army  orders  the  name  of  "N.  B.  Dana,  General 
Commanding." 

That  set  me  to  thinking.  Was  not  Dana  the 
name  of  a  certain  captain,  a  stepson  of  Congress 
man  Peaslee,  of  New  Hampshire,  who  had  lived 
with  us  at  Willard's  Hotel — and  were  there  not 
two  children,  Charley  and  Mamie,  and  a  dear  little 

mother,  and I  had  been  listening  to  the  talk 

of  the  newcomer.  He  was  a  licensed  cotton  buyer 
with  a  pass  to  come  and  go  at  will  through  the 
lines,  and  was  returning  next  day. 

"I  want  to  get  into  Memphis — I  am  a  nephew  of 
Mrs.  General  Dana.  Can  you  take  me  in?"  I  said 
to  this  person. 

After  some  hesitation  he  consented  to  try,  it 

[87] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

being  agreed  that  my  mount  and  outfit  should  be 
his  if  he  got  me  through ;  no  trade  if  he  failed. 

Clearly  the  way  ahead  was  brightening.  I  soon 
ascertained  that  I  was  with  friends,  loyal  Con 
federates.  Then  I  told  them  who  I  was,  and  all 
became  excitement  for  the  next  day's  adventure. 

We  drove  down  to  the  Federal  outpost.  Cren- 
shaw — that  was  the  name  of  the  cotton  buyer — 
showed  his  pass  to  the  officer  in  command,  who 
then  turned  to  me.  "Captain,"  I  said,  "I  have  no 
pass,  but  I  am  a  nephew  of  Mrs.  General  Dana. 
Can  you  not  pass  me  in  without  a  pass?"  He  was 
very  polite.  It  was  a  chain  picket,  he  said;  his 
orders  were  very  strict,  and  so  on. 

"Well,"  I  said,  "suppose  I  were  a  member  of 
your  own  command  and  were  run  in  here  by 
guerillas.  What  do  you  think  would  it  be  your 
duty  to  do?" 

"In  that  case,"  he  answered,  "I  should  send  you 
to  headquarters  with  a  guard." 

"Good!"  said  I.  "Can't  you  send  me  to  head 
quarters  with  a  guard?" 

He  thought  a  moment.    Then  he  called  a  cavalry 
man  from  the  outpost. 
[88] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

"Britton,"  he  said,  "show  this  gentleman  in  to 
General  Dana's  headquarters." 

Crenshaw  lashed  his  horse  and  away  we  went. 
"That  boy  thinks  he  is  a  guide,  not  a  guard,"  said 
he.  "You  are  all  right.  We  can  easily  get  rid  of 
him." 

This  proved  true.  We  stopped  by  a  saloon  and 
bought  a  bottle  of  whisky.  When  we  reached  head 
quarters  the  lad  said,  "Do  you  gentlemen  want  me 
any  more?"  We  did  not.  Then  we  gave  him  the 
bottle  of  whisky  and  he  disappeared  round  the  cor 
ner.  "Now  you  are  safe,"  said  Crenshaw.  "Make 
tracks." 

But  as  I  turned  away  and  out  of  sight  I  began 
to  consider  the  situation.  Suppose  that  picket  on 
the  outpost  reported  to  the  provost  marshal  general 
that  he  had  passed  a  relative  of  Mrs.  Dana?  What 
then?  Provost  guard.  Drumhead  court-martial. 
Shot  at  daylight.  It  seemed  best  to  play  out  the 
hand  as  I  had  dealt  it.  After  all,  I  could  make  a 
case  if  I  faced  it  out. 

The  guard  at  the  door  refused  me  access  to  Gen 
eral  Dana.  Driven  by  a  nearby  hackman  to  the 
General's  residence,  and,  boldly  asking  for  Mrs. 
Dana,  I  was  more  successful.  I  introduced  myself 

[89] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

as  a  teacher  of  music  seeking  to  return  to  my 
friends  in  the  North,  working  in  a  word  about  the 
old  Washington  days,  not  forgetting  "Charley" 
and  "Mamie."  The  dear  little  woman  was  heartily 
responsive.  Both  were  there,  including  a  pretty 
girl  from  Philadelphia,  and  she  called  them  down. 
"Here  is  your  old  friend,  Henry  Waterman,"  she 
joyfully  exclaimed.  Then  guests  began  to  arrive. 
It  was  a  reception  evening.  My  hope  fell.  Some 
one  would  surely  recognize  me.  Presently  a  gen 
tleman  entered,  and  Mrs.  Dana  said:  "Colonel  Mee- 
han,  this  is  my  particular  friend,  Henry  Waterman, 
who  has  been  teaching  music  out  in  the  country, 
and  wants  to  go  up  the  river.  You  will  give  him  a 
pass,  I  am  sure."  It  was  the  provost  marshal,  who 
answered,  "certainly."  Now  was  my  time  for  dis 
appearing.  But  Mrs.  Dana  would  not  listen  to  this. 
General  Dana  would  never  forgive  her  if  she  let 
me  go.  Besides,  there  was  to  be  a  supper  and  a 
dance.  I  sat  down  again  very  much  disconcerted. 
The  situation  was  becoming  awkward.  Then  Mrs. 
Dana  spoke.  "You  say  you  have  been  teaching 
music.  What  is  your  instrument?"  Saved!  "The 
piano,"  I  answered.  The  girls  escorted  me  to  the 
rear  drawing-room.  It  was  a  new  Steinway  Grand, 
[90] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

just  set  up,  and  I  played  for  my  life.  If  the  black 
bombazine  covering  my  gray  uniform  did  not 
break,  all  would  be  well.  I  was  having  a  delight 
fully  good  time,  the  girls  on  either  hand,  when 
Mrs.  Dana,  still  enthusiastic,  ran  in  and  said,  "Gen 
eral  Dana  is  here.  Remembers  you  perfectly. 
Come  and  see  him." 

He  stood  by  a  table,  tall,  sardonic,  and  as  I  ap 
proached  he  put  out  his  hand  and  said:  "You  have 
grown  a  bit,  Henry,  my  boy,  since  I  saw  you  last. 
How  did  you  leave  my  friend  Forrest?" 

I  was  about  making  some  awkward  reply,  when, 
the  room  already  filling  up,  he  said: 

"We  have  some  friends  for  supper.  I  am  glad 
you  are  here.  Mamie,  my  daughter,  take  Mr.  Wat- 
terson  to  the  table!"  , 

Lord!  That  supper!  Canvasback!  Terrapin! 
Champagne!  The  general  had  seated  me  at  his 
right.  Somewhere  toward  the  close  those  expres 
sive  gray  eyes  looked  at  me  keenly,  and  across  his 
wine  glass  he  said: 

"I  think  I  understand  this.  You  want  to  get  up 
the  river.  You  want  to  see  your  mother.  Have 
you  money  enough  to  carry  you  through?  If  you 

[91] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

have  not  don't  hesitate,  for  whatever  you  need  I 
will  gladly  let  you  have." 

I  thanked  him.  I  had  quite  enough.  All  was 
well.  We  had  more  music  and  some  dancing.  At 
a  late  hour  he  called  the  provost  marshal. 

"Meehan,"  said  he,  "take  this  dangerous  young 
rebel  round  to  the  hotel,  register  him  as  Smith, 
Brown,  or  something,  and  send  him  with  a  pass  up 
the  river  by  the  first  steamer."  I  was  in  luck,  was 
I  not? 

But  I  made  no  impression  on  those  girls.  Many 
years  after,  meeting  Mamie  Dana,  as  the  wife  of  an 
army  officer  at  Fortress  Monroe,  I  related  the 
Memphis  incident.  She  did  not  in  the  least  recall  it. 


I  had  one  other  adventure  during  the  war  that 
may  be  worth  telling.  It  was  in  1862.  Forrest 
took  it  into  his  inexperienced  fighting  head  to  make 
a  cavalry  attack  upon  a  Federal  stockade,  and,  re 
pulsed  with  considerable  loss,  the  command  had  to 
disperse — there  were  not  more  than  two  hundred 
of  us — in  order  to  escape  capture  by  the  newly- 
arrived  reinforcements  that  swarmed  about.  We 
[92] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

were  to  rendezvous  later  at  a  certain  point.  Hav 
ing  some  time  to  spare,  and  being  near  the  family 
homestead  at  Beech  Grove,  I  put  in  there. 

It  was  midnight  when  I  reached  my  destination. 
I  had  been  erroneously  informed  that  the  Union 
Army  was  on  the  retreat — quite  gone  from  the 
neighborhood;  and  next  day,  believing  the  coast 
was  clear,  I  donned  a  summer  suit  and  with  a  neigh 
bor  boy  who  had  been  wounded  at  Shiloh  and  in 
valided  home,  rode  over  to  visit  some  young  ladies. 
We  had  scarcely  been  welcomed  and  were  taking  a 
glass  of  wine  when,  looking  across  the  lawn,  we 
saw  that  the  place  was  being  surrounded  by  a  body 
of  blue-coats.  The  story  of  their  departure  had 
been  a  mistake.  They  were  not  all  gone. 

There  was  no  chance  of  escape.  We  were  placed 
in  a  hollow  square  and  marched  across  country  into 
camp.  Before  we  got  there  I  had  ascertained  that 
they  were  Indianians,  and  I  was  further  led  rightly 
to  surmise  what  we  called  in  1860  Douglas  Demo 
crats. 

My  companion,  a  husky  fellow,  who  looked  and 
was  every  inch  a  soldier,  was  first  questioned  by  the 
colonel  in  command.  His  examination  was  brief. 
He  said  he  was  as  good  a  rebel  as  lived,  that  he  was 

[93] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

only  waiting  for  his  wound  to  heal  to  get  back  into 
the  Confederate  Army,  and  that  if  they  wanted  to 
hang  him  for  a  spy  to  go  ahead. 

I  was  aghast.  It  was  not  he  that  was  in  danger 
of  hanging,  but  myself,  a  soldier  in  citizen's  apparel 
within  the  enemy's  lines.  The  colonel  turned  to 
me.  With  what  I  took  for  a  sneer  he  said: 

"I  suppose  you  are  a  good  Union  man?"  This 
off ered  me  a  chance. 

"That  depends  upon  what  you  call  a  good  Union 
man,"  I  answered.  "I  used  to  be  a  very  good 
Union  man — a  Douglas  Democrat — and  I  am  not 
conscious  of  having  changed  my  political  opinions." 

That  softened  him  and  we  had  an  old-fashioned, 
friendly  talk  about  the  situation,  in  which  I  kept 
the  Douglas  Democratic  end  of  it  well  to  the  fore. 
He,  too,  had  been  a  Douglas  Democrat.  I  soon 
saw  that  it  was  my  companion  and  not  myself  whom 
they  were  after.  Presently  Colonel  Shook,  that 
being  the  commandant's  name,  went  into  the  ad 
jacent  stockade  and  the  boys  about  began  to  be 
hearty  and  sympathetic.  I  made  them  a  regular 
Douglas  Democratic  speech.  They  brought  some 
"red  licker"  and  I  asked  for  some  sugar  for  a  toddy, 
not  failing  to  cite  the  familiar  Sut  Lovingood  say- 
[94] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

ing  that '  'there  were  about  seventeen  round  the  door 
who  said  they'd  take  sugar  in  their'n."  The  drink 
warmed  me  to  my  work,  making  me  quicker,  if  not 
bolder,  in  invention.  Then  the  colonel  not  reap 
pearing  as  soon  as  I  hoped  he  would,  for  all  along 
my  fear  was  the  wires,  I  went  to  him. 

"Colonel  Shook,"  I  said,  "y°u  nee(i  n°t  bother 
about  this  friend  of  mine.  He  has  no  real  idea  of 
returning  to  the  Confederate  service.  He  is  teach 
ing  school  over  here  at  Beech  Grove  and  engaged 
to  be  married  to  one  of  the — girls.  If  you  carry 
him  off  a  prisoner  he  will  be  exchanged  back  into 
the  fighting  line,  and  we  make  nothing  by  it.  There 

is  a  hot  luncheon  waiting  for  us  at  the 's.  Leave 

him  to  me  and  I  will  be  answerable."  Then  I  left 
him. 

Directly  he  came  out  and  said:  "I  may  be  doing 
wrong,  and  don't  feel  entirely  sure  of  my  ground, 
but  I  am  going  to  let  you  gentlemen  go." 

We  thanked  him  and  made  off  amid  the  cheery 
good-bys  of  the  assembled  blue-coats. 

No  lunch  for  us.  We  got  to  our  horses,  rode 
away,  and  that  night  I  was  at  our  rendezvous  to 
tell  the  tale  to  those  of  my  comrades  who  had  ar 
rived  before  me. 

[95] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Colonel  Shook  and  I  met  after  the  war  at  a 
Grand  Army  reunion  where  I  was  billed  to  speak 
and  to  which  he  introduced  me,  relating  the  inci 
dent  and  saying,  among  other  things:  "I  do  believe 
that  when  he  told  me  near  Wartrace  that  day 
twenty  years  ago  that  he  was  a  good  Union  man  he 
told  at  least  half  the  truth." 


[96] 


CHAPTER  THE  FOURTH 

I  GO  TO  LONDON — AM  INTRODUCED  TO  A  NOTABLE  SET 

HUXLEY,  SPENCER,  MILL  AND  TYNDALL AR- 

TEMUS    WARD    COMES    TO    TOWN — THE    SAVAGE 
CLUB. 

I 

THE  fall  of  Atlanta  after  a  siege  of  nearly 
two  months  was,  in  the  opinion  of  thoughtful 
people,  the  sure  precursor  of  the  fall  of  the  doomed 
Confederacy.  I  had  an  affectionate  regard  for 
General  Hood,  but  it  was  my  belief  that  neither 
he  nor  any  other  soldier  could  save  the  day,  and 
being  out  of  commission  and  having  no  mind  for 
what  I  conceived  aimless  campaigning  through  an 
other  winter — especially  an  advance  into  Tennes 
see  upon  Nashville — I  wrote  to  an  old  friend  of 
mine,  who  owned  the  Montgomery  Mail,  asking 
for  a  job.  He  answered  that  if  I  would  come  right 
along  and  take  the  editorship  of  the  paper  he  would 
make  me  a  present  of  half  of  it — a  proposal  so  op 
portune  and  tempting  that  forty-eight  hours  later 
saw  me  in  the  capital  of  Alabama. 

[97]| 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

I  was  accompanied  by  my  fidus  Achates,  Albert 
Roberts.  The  morning  after  our  arrival,  by  chance 
I  came  across  a  printed  line  which  advertised  a  room 
and  board  for  two  "single  gentlemen,"  with  the 
curious  affix  for  those  times,  "references  will  be 
given  and  required."  This  latter  caught  me. 
When  I  rang  the  visitors'  bell  of  a  pretty  dwell 
ing  upon  one  of  the  nearby  streets  a  distinguished 
gentleman  in  uniform  came  to  the  door,  and,  ac 
quainted  with  my  business,  he  said,  "Ah,  that  is  an 
affair  of  my  wife,"  and  invited  me  within. 

He  was  obviously  English.  Presently  there  ap 
peared  a  beautiful  lady,  likewise  English  and  as 
obviously  a  gentlewoman,  and  an  hour  later  my 
friend  Roberts  and  I  moved  in.  The  incident 
proved  in  many  ways  fateful.  The  military  gen 
tleman  proved  to  be  Doctor  Scott,  the  post  sur 
geon.  He  was,  when  we  came  to  know  him,  the 
most  interesting  of  men,  a  son  of  that  Captain 
Scott  who  commanded  Byron's  flagship  at  Misso- 
longhi  in  1823 ;  had  as  a  lad  attended  the  poet  and  he 
in  his  last  illness  and  been  in  at  the  death,  seeing 
the  club  foot  when  the  body  was  prepared  for  burial. 
His  wife  was  adorable.  There  were  two  girls  and 
two  boys.  To  make  a  long  story  short,  Albert  Rob- 
[98] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

erts  married  one  of  the  daughters,  his  brother  the 
other ;  the  lads  growing  up  to  be  successful  and  dis 
tinguished  men — one  a  naval  admiral,  the  other  a 
railway  president.  When,  just  after  the  war,  I 
was  going  abroad,  Mrs.  Scott  said:  "I  have  a 
brother  living  in  London  to  whom  I  will  be  glad 

to  give  you  a  letter." 

II 

Upon  the  deck  of  the  steamer  bound  from  New 
York  to  London  direct,  as  we,  my  wife  and  I  newly 
married,  were  taking  a  last  look  at  the  receding 
American  shore,  there  appeared  a  gentleman  who 
seemed  by  the  cut  of  his  jib  startlingly  French.  We 
had  under  our  escort  a  French  governess  returning 
to  Paris.  In  a  twinkle  she  and  this  gentleman  had 
struck  up  an  acquaintance,  and  much  to  my  dis 
pleasure  she  introduced  him  to  me  as  "Monsieur 
Mahoney."  I  was  somewhat  mollified  when  later 
we  were  made  acquainted  with  Madame  Mahoney. 

I  was  not  at  all  preconceived  in  his  favor,  nor  did 
Monsieur  Mahoney,  upon  nearer  approach,  con 
ciliate  my  simple  taste.  In  person,  manners  and 
apparel  he  was  quite  beyond  me.  Mrs.  Mahoney, 
however,  as  we  soon  called  her,  was  a  dear,  whole- 
souled,  traveled,  unaffected  New  England  woman. 

[99] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

But  Monsieur!  Lord!  There  was  no  holding  him 
at  arm's  length.  He  brooked  not  resistance.  I  was 
wearing  a  full  beard.  He  said  it  would  never  do, 
carried  me  perforce  below,  and  cut  it  as  I  have  worn 
it  ever  since.  The  day  before  we  were  to  dock  he 
took  me  aside  and  said: 

"Mee  young  friend" — he  had  a  brogue  which 
thirty  years  in  Algiers,  where  he  had  been  consul, 
and  a  dozen  in  Paris  as  a  gentleman  of  leisure,  had 
not  wholly  spoiled — "Mee  young  friend,  I  observe 
that  you  are  shy  of  strangers,  but  my  wife  and  I 
have  taken  a  shine  to  you  and  the  'Princess',"  as 
he  called  Mrs.  Watterson,  "and  if  you  will  allow 
us,  we  can  be  of  some  sarvis  to  you  when  we  get  to 
town." 

Certainly  there  was  no  help  for  it.  I  was  too  ill 
of  the  long  crossing  to  oppose  him.  At  Blackwall 
we  took  the  High  Level  for  Fenchurch  Street,  at 
Fenchurch  Street  a  cab  for  the  West  End — Mr. 
Mahoney  bossing  the  job — and  finally,  in  most 
comfortable  and  inexpensive  lodgings,  we  were 
settled  in  Jermyn  Street.  The  Mahoneys  were 
visiting  Lady  Elmore,  widow  of  a  famous  surgeon 
and  mother  of  the  President  of  the  Royal  Academy. 

[100] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Thus  we  were  introduced  to  quite  a  distinguished 
artistic  set. 

It  was  great.  It  was  glorious.  At  last  we  were 
in  London — the  dream  of  my  literary  ambitions.  I 
have  since  lived  much  in  this  wondrous  city  and  in 
many  parts  of  it  between  Hyde  Park  Corner,  the 
heart  of  May  Fair,  to  the  east  end  of  Bloomsbury 
under  the  very  sound  of  Bow  Bells.  All  the  way  as 
it  were  from  Tyburn  Tree  that  was,  and  the  Mar 
ble  Arch  that  is,  to  Charing  Cross  and  the  Hay 
Market.  This  were  not  to  mention  casual  sojourns 
along  Piccadilly  and  the  Strand. 

In  childhood  I  was  obsessed  by  the  immensity, 
the  atmosphere  and  the  mystery  of  London.  Its 
nomenclature  embedded  itself  in  my  fancy ;  Houns- 
ditch  and  Shoreditch,  Billingsgate  and  Blackfriars ; 
Bishopgate,  within,  and  Bishopgate,  without; 
Threadneedle  Street  and  Wapping-Old- Stairs; 
the  Inns  of  Court  where  Jarndyce  struggled  with 
Jarndyce,  and  the  taverns  where  the  Mark  Tap- 
leys,  the  Captain  Costigans  and  the  Dolly  Var- 
dens  consorted. 

Alike  in  winter  fog  and  summer  haze,  I  grew  to 
know  and  love  it,  and  those  that  may  be  called  its 
dramatis  personae,  especially  its  tatterdemalions, 

[101] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

the  long  procession  led  by  Jack  Sheppard,  Dick 
Turpin  and  Jonathan  Wild  the  Great.  Inevitably 
I  sought  their  haunts — and  they  were  not  all  gone 
in  those  days;  the  Bull-and-Gate  in  Holborn, 
whither  Mr.  Tom  Jones  repaired  on  his  arrival  in 
town,  and  the  White  Hart  Tavern,  where  Mr. 
Pickwick  fell  in  with  Mr.  Sam  Weller;  the  regions 
about  Leicester  Fields  and  Russell  Square  sacred 
to  the  memory  of  Captain  Booth  and  the  lovely 
Amelia  and  Becky  Sharp;  where  Garrick  drank 
tea  with  Dr.  Johnson  and  Henry  Esmond  tippled 
with  Sir  Richard  Steele.  There  was  yet  a  Pump 
Court,  and  many  places  along  Oxford  Street  where 
Mantalini  and  De  Quincy  loitered:  and  Covent 
Garden  and  Drury  Lane.  Evans'  Coffee  House, 
or  shall  I  say  the  Cave  of  Harmony,  and  The  Cock 
and  the  Cheshire  Cheese  were  near  at  hand  for  re 
freshment  in  the  agreeable  society  of  Daniel  Defoe 
and  Joseph  Addison,  with  Oliver  Goldsmith  and 
Dick  Swiveller  and  Colonel  Newcome  to  clink 
ghostly  glasses  amid  the  punch  fumes  and  tobacco 
smoke.  In  short  I  knew  London  when  it  was  still 
Old  London — the  knowledge  of  Temple  Bar  and 
Cheapside — before  the  vandal  horde  of  progress 
[102] 


"MARSE  HENRY'* 

and  the  pickaxe  of  the  builder  had  got  in  their 
nefarious  work. 

in 

Not  long  after  we  began  our  sojourn  in  London, 
I  recurred — by  chance,  I  am  ashamed  to  say — to 
Mrs.  Scott's  letter  of  introduction  to  her  brother. 
The  address  read  "Mr.  Thomas  H.  Huxley,  School 
of  Mines,  Jermyn  Street."  Why,  it  was  but  two  or 
three  blocks  away,  and  being  so  near  I  called,  not 
knowing  just  who  Mr.  Thomas  H.  Huxley  might 
be. 

I  was  conducted  to  a  dark,  stuffy  little  room. 
The  gentleman  who  met  me  was  exceedingly  hand 
some  and  very  agreeable.  He  greeted  me  cordially 
and  we  had  some  talk  about  his  relatives  in  Amer 
ica.  Of  course  my  wife  and  I  were  invited  at  once 
to  dinner.  I  was  a  little  perplexed.  There  was  no 
one  to  tell  me  about  Huxley,  or  in  what  way  he 
might  be  connected  with  the  School  of  Mines. 

It  was  a  good  dinner.  There  sat  at  table  a 
gentleman  by  the  name  of  Tyndall  and  another  by 
the  name  of  Mill — of  neither  I  had  ever  heard — but 
there  was  still  another  of  the  name  of  Spencer, 
whom  I  fancied  must  be  a  literary  man,  for  I  re 
called  having  reviewed  a  clever  book  on  Education 

[103] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

some  four  years  agone  by  a  writer  of  that  name; 
a  certain  Herbert  Spencer,  whom  I  rightly  judged 
might  he  be. 

The  dinner,  I  repeat,  was  a  very  good  dinner  in 
deed — the  Huxley s,  I  took  it,  must  be  well  to  do — 
the  company  agreeable;  a  bit  pragmatic,  however, 
I  thought.  The  gentleman  by  the  name  of  Spencer 
said  he  loved  music  and  wished  to  hear  Mrs.  Wat- 
terson  sing,  especially  Longfellow's  Rainy  Day, 
and  left  the  others  of  us — Huxley,  Mill,  Tyndall 
and  myself — at  table.  Finding  them  a  little  off  on 
the  Irish  question  as  well  as  American  affairs,  I  set 
them  right  as  to  both  with  much  particularity  and 
a  great  deal  of  satisfaction  to  myself. 

Whatever  Huxley's  occupation,  it  turned  out 
that  he  had  at  least  one  book-publishing  acquaint 
ance,  Mr.  Alexander  Macmillan,  to  whom  he  intro 
duced  me  next  day,  for  I  had  brought  with  me  a 
novel — the  great  American  romance — too  good  to 
be  wasted  on  New  York,  Philadelphia  or  Boston, 
but  to  appear  simultaneously  in  England  and  the 
United  States,  to  be  translated,  of  course,  into 
French,  Italian  and  German.  This  was  actually 
accepted.  It  was  held  for  final  revision. 

We  were  to  pass  the  winter  in  Italy.  An  event, 
[104] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

however,  called  me  suddenly  home.  Politics  and 
journalism  knocked  literature  sky  high,  and  the 
novel— it  was  entitled  "One  Story's  Good  Till  An 
other  Is  Told" — was  laid  by  and  quite  forgotten. 
Some  twenty  years  later,  at  a  moment  when  I  was 
being  lashed  from  one  end  of  the  line  to  the  other, 
my  wife  said : 

"Let  us  drop  the  nasty  politics  and  get  back  to 
literature."  She  had  preserved  the  old  manuscript, 
two  thousand  pages  of  it. 

"Fetch  it,"  I  said. 

She  brought  it  with  effulgent  pride.  Heavens! 
The  stuff  it  was!  Not  a  gleam,  never  a  radiance. 
I  had  been  teaching  myself  to  write — I  had  been 
writing  for  the  English  market — perpendicular! 
The  Lord  has  surely  been  good  to  me.  If  the 
"boys"  had  ever  got  a  peep  at  that  novel,  I  had  been 
lost  indeed! 

IV 

Yea,  verily  we  were  in  London.  Presently 
Artemus  Ward  and  "the  show"  arrived  in  town. 
He  took  a  lodging  over  an  apothecary's  just  across 
the  way  from  Egyptian  Hall  in  Piccadilly,  where 
he  was  to  lecture.  We  had  been  the  best  of  friends, 
were  near  of  an  age,  and  only  round-the-corner 

[105] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

apart  we  became  from  the  first  inseparable.  I  in 
troduced  him  to  the  distinguished  scientific  set  into 
which  chance  had  thrown  me,  and  he  introduced 
me  to  a  very  different  set  that  made  a  revel  of  life 
at  the  Savage  Club. 

I  find  by  reference  to  some  notes  jotted  down  at 
the  time  that  the  last  I  saw  of  him  was  the  evening 
of  the  21st  of  December,  1866.  He  had  dined  with 
my  wife  and  myself,  and,  accompanied  by  Arthur 
Sketchley,  who  had  dropped  in  after  dinner,  he 
bade  us  good-by  and  went  for  his  nightly  grind,  as 
he  called  it.  We  were  booked  to  take  our  depar 
ture  the  next  morning.  His  condition  was  pitiable. 
He  was  too  feeble  to  walk  alone,  and  was  con 
tinually  struggling  to  breathe  freely.  His  surgeon 
had  forbidden  the  use  of  wine  or  liquor  of  any  sort. 
Instead  he  drank  quantities  of  water,  eating  little 
and  taking  no  exercise  at  all.  Nevertheless,  he 
stuck  to  his  lecture  and  contrived  to  keep  up  ap 
pearances  before  the  crowds  that  flocked  to  hear 
him,  and  even  in  London  his  critical  state  of  health 
was  not  suspected. 

Early  in  September,  when  I  had  parted  from  him 
to  go  to  Paris,  I  left  him  methodically  and  indus 
triously  arranging  for  his  debut.  He  had  brought 
[106] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

some  letters,  mainly  to  newspaper  people,  and  was 
already  making  progress  toward  what  might  be 
called  the  interior  circles  of  the  press,  which  are  so 
essential  to  the  success  of  a  newcomer  in  London. 
Charles  Reade  and  Andrew  Haliday  became  zeal 
ous  friends.  It  was  to  the  latter  that  he  owed  his 
introduction  to  the  Savage  Club.  Here  he  soon 
made  himself  at  home.  His  manners,  even  his 
voice,  were  half  English,  albeit  he  possessed  a  most 
engaging  disposition — a  ready  tact  and  keen  dis 
cernment,  very  un-English, — and  these  won  him 
an  efficient  corps  of  claquers  and  backers  through 
out  the  newspapers  and  periodicals  of  the  metrop 
olis.  Thus  his  success  was  assured  from  the  first. 
The  raw  November  evening  when  he  opened  at 
Egyptian  Hall  the  room  was  crowded  with  an 
audience  of  literary  men  and  women,  great  and 
small,  from  Swinburne  and  Edmund  Yates  to  the 
trumpeters  and  reporters  of  the  morning  papers. 
The  next  day  most  of  these  contained  glowing  ac 
counts.  The  Times  was  silent,  but  four  days  later 
The  Thunderer,  seeing  how  the  wind  blew,  came 
out  with  a  column  of  eulogy,  and  from  this  onward, 
each  evening  proved  a  kind  of  ovation.  Seats  were 
engaged  for  a  week  in  advance.  Up  and  down 

[107] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Piccadilly,  from  St.  James  Church  to  St.  James 
Street,  carriages  bearing  the  first  arms  in  the 
kingdom  were  parked  night  after  night;  and  the 
evening  of  the  21st  of  December,  six  weeks  after, 
there  was  no  falling  off.  The  success  was  com 
plete.  As  to  an  American,  London  had  never  seen 
the  like. 

All  this  while  the  poor  author  of  the  sport  was 
slowly  dying.  The  demands  upon  his  animal  spirits 
at  the  Savage  Club,  the  bodily  fatigue  of  "getting 
himself  up  to  it,"  the  "damnable  iteration"  of  the 
lecture  itself,  wore  him  out.  George,  his  valet, 
whom  he  had  brought  from  America,  had  finally  to 
lift  him  about  his  bedroom  like  a  child.  His  quar 
ters  in  Picadilly,  as  I  have  said,  were  just  opposite 
the  Hall,  but  he  could  not  go  backward  and  for 
ward  without  assistance.  It  was  painful  in  the  ex 
treme  to  see  the  man  who  was  undergoing  tortures 
behind  the  curtain  step  lightly  before  the  audience 
amid  a  burst  of  merriment,  and  for  more  than  an 
hour  sustain  the  part  of  jester,  tossing  his  cap  and 
jingling  his  bells,  a  painted  death's  head,  for  he 
had  to  rouge  his  face  to  hide  the  pallor. 

His  buoyancy  forsook  him.  He  was  occasionally 
nervous  and  fretful.  The  fog,  he  declared,  felt 
[108] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

like  a  winding  sheet,  enwrapping  and  strangling 
him.  At  one  of  his  entertainments  he  made  a  grim, 
serio-comic  allusion  to  this.  "But,"  cried  he  as  he 
came  off  the  stage,  "that  was  not  a  hit,  was  it? 
The  English  are  scary  about  death.  I'll  have  to 
cut  it  out." 

He  had  become  a  contributor  to  Punch,  a  lucky 
rather  than  smart  business  stroke,  for  it  was  not  of 
his  own  initiation.  He  did  not  continue  his  con 
tributions  after  he  began  to  appear  before  the  pub 
lic,  and  the  discontinuance  was  made  the  occasion  of 
some  ill-natured  remarks  in  certain  American 
papers,  which  very  much  wounded  him.  They 
were  largely  circulated  and  credited  at  the  time,  the 
charge  being  that  Messrs.  Bradbury  and  Evans, 
the  publishers  of  the  English  charivari,  had  broken 
with  him  because  the  English  would  not  have  him. 
The  truth  is  that  their  original  proposal  was  made 
to  him,  not  by  him  to  them,  the  price  named 
being  fifteen  guineas  a  letter.  He  asked  permis 
sion  to  duplicate  the  arrangement  with  some  New 
York  periodical,  so  as  to  secure  an  American  copy 
right.  This  they  refused.  I  read  the  correspond 
ence  at  the  time.  "Our  aim,"  they  said,  "in  mak- 

[109] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

ing  the  engagement,  had  reference  to  our  own  cir 
culation  in  the  United  States,  which  exceeds  twenty- 
seven  thousand  weekly." 

I  suggested  to  Artemus  that  he  enter  his  book, 
"Artemus  Ward  in  London,"  in  advance,  and  he 
did  write  to  Oakey  Hall,  his  New  York  lawyer,  to 
that  effect.  Before  he  received  an  answer  from 
Hall  he  got  Carleton's  advertisement  announcing 
the  book.  Considering  this  a  piratical  design  on  the 
part  of  Carleton,  he  addressed  that  enterprising 
publisher  a  savage  letter,  but  the  matter  was 
ultimately  cleared  up  to  his  satisfaction,  for  he 
said  just  before  we  parted:  "It  was  all  a  mistake 
about  Carleton.  I  did  him  an  injustice  and  mean 
to  ask  his  pardon.  He  has  behaved  very  hand 
somely  to  me."  Then  the  letters  reappeared  in 

Punch. 

v 

Whatever  may  be  thought  of  them  on  this  side 
of  the  Atlantic,  their  success  in  England  was  un 
deniable.  They  were  more  talked  about  than  any 
current  literary  matter;  never  a  club  gathering  or 
dinner  party  at  which  they  were  not  discussed. 
There  did  seem  something  both  audacious  and 
grotesque  in  this  ruthless  Yankee  poking  in  among 
[110] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

the  revered  antiquities  of  Britain,  so  that  the  beef- 
eating  British  themselves  could  not  restrain  their 
laughter.  They  took  his  jokes  in  excellent  part. 
The  letters  on  the  Tower  and  Chawsir  were  palpa- 
hle  hits,  and  it  was  generally  agreed  that  Punch  had 
contained  nothing  better  since  the  days  of  Yellow- 
plush.  This  opinion  was  not  confined  to  the  man 
in  the  street.  It  was  shared  by  the  high-brows  of 
the  reviews  and  the  appreciative  of  society,  and 
gained  Artemus  the  entree  wherever  he  cared  to  go. 
Invitations  pursued  him  and  he  was  even  elected 
to  two  or  three  fashionable  clubs.  But  he  had  a 
preference  for  those  which  were  less  conventional. 
His  admission  to  the  Garrick,  which  had  been 
at  first  "laid  over,"  affords  an  example  of  London 
club  fastidiousness.  The  gentleman  who  proposed 
him  used  his  pseudonym,  Artemus  Ward,  instead 
of  his  own  name,  Charles  F.  Browne.  I  had  the 
pleasure  of  introducing  him  to  Mr.  Alexander  Mac- 
millan,  the  famous  book  publisher  of  Oxford  and 
Cambridge,  a  leading  member  of  the  Garrick.  We 
dined  together  at  the  Garrick  clubhouse,  when  the 
matter  was  brought  up  and  explained.  The  result 
was  that  Charles  F.  Browne  was  elected  at  the  next 

[in] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

meeting,  where  Artemus  Ward,  had  been  made  to 
stand  aside. 

Before  Christmas,  Artemus  received  invitations 
from  distinguished  people,  nobility  and  gentry  as 
well  as  men  of  letters,  to  spend  the  week-end  with 
them.  But  he  declined  them  all.  He  needed  his 
vacation,  he  said,  for  rest.  He  had  neither  the 
strength  nor  the  spirit  for  the  season. 

Yet  was  he  delighted  with  the  English  people 
and  with  English  life.  His  was  one  of  those  re 
ceptive  natures  which  enjoy  whatever  is  wholesome 
and  sunny.  In  spite  of  his  bodily  pain,  he  enter 
tained  a  lively  hope  of  coming  out  of  it  in  the 
spring,  and  did  not  realize  his  true  condition.  He 
merely  said,  -"I  have  overworked  myself,  and  must 
lay  by  or  I  shall  break  down  altogether."  He  meant 
to  remain  in  London  as  long  as  his  welcome  lasted, 
and  when  he  perceived  a  falling  off  in  his  audience, 
would  close  his  season  and  go  to  the  continent. 
His  receipts  averaged  about  three  hundred  dollars 
a  night,  whilst  his  expenses  were  not  fifty  dollars. 
"This,  mind  you,"  he  used  to  say,  "is  in  very  hard 
cash,  an  article  altogether  superior  to  that  of  my 
friend  Charles  Reade." 

His  idea  was  to  set  aside  out  of  his  earnings 
[112] 


ARTEMAS  WARD 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

enough  to  make  him  independent,  and  then  to  give 
up  "this  mountebank  business,"  as  he  called  it.  He 
had  a  great  respect  for  scholarly  culture  and  per 
sonal  respectability,  and  thought  that  if  he  could 
get  time  and  health  he  might  do  something  "in  the 
genteel  comedy  line."  He  had  a  humorous  novel 
in  view,  and  a  series  of  more  aspiring  comic  essays 
than  any  he  had  attempted. 

Often  he  alluded  to  the  opening  for  an  American 
magazine,  "not  quite  so  highfalutin  as  the  Atlantic 
nor  so  popular  as  Harper's."  His  mind  was  begin 
ning  to  soar  above  the  showman  and  merrymaker. 
His  manners  had  always  been  captivating.  Except 
for  the  nervous  worry  of  ill-health,  he  was  the  kind- 
hearted,  unaffected  Artemus  of  old,  loving  as  a 
girl  and  liberal  as  a  prince.  He  once  showed  me 
his  daybook  in  which  were  noted  down  over  five 
hundred  dollars  lent  out  in  small  sums  to  indigent 
Americans. 

"Why,"  said  I,  "you  will  never  get  half  of  it 
back." 

"Of  course  not,"  he  said,  "but  do  you  think  I 
can  afford  to  have  a  lot  of  loose  fellows  black 
guarding  me  at  home  because  I  wouldn't  let  them 
have  a  sovereign  or  so  over  here?" 

[113] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

There  was  no  lack  of  independence,  however, 
about  him.  The  benefit  which  he  gave  Mrs.  Jeffer 
son  Davis  in  New  Orleans,  which  was  denounced 
at  the  North  as  toadying  to  the  Rebels,  proceeded 
from  a  wholly  different  motive.  He  took  a  kindly 
interest  in  the  case  because  it  was  represented  to 
him  as  one  of  suffering,  and  knew  very  well  at 
the  time  that  his  bounty  would  meet  with  detrac 
tion. 

He  used  to  relate  with  gusto  an  interview  he  once 
had  with  Murat  Halstead,  who  had  printed  a  tart 
paragraph  about  him.  He  went  into  the  office  of 
the  Cincinnati  editor,  and  began  in  his  usual  jocose 
way  to  ask  for  the  needful  correction.  Halstead 
resented  the  proffered  familiarity,  when  Artemus 
told  him  flatly,  suddenly  changing  front,  that  he 
"didn't  care  a  d — n  for  the  Commercial,  and  the 
whole  establishment  might  go  to  hell."  Next  day 
the  paper  appeared  with  a  handsome  amende,  and 
the  two  became  excellent  friends.  "I  have  no 
doubt,"  said  Artemus,  "that  if  I  had  whined  or 
begged,  I  should  have  disgusted  Halstead,  and  he 
would  have  put  it  to  me  tighter.  As  it  was,  he  con 
cluded  that  I  was  not  a  sneak,  and  treated  me  like 
a  gentleman." 
[114] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Artemus  received  many  tempting  offers  from 
book  publishers  in  London.  Several  of  the  Annuals 
for  1866-67  contain  sketches,  some  of  them  anony 
mous,  written  by  him,  for  all  of  which  he  was  well 
paid.  He  wrote  for  Fun — the  editor  of  which, 
Mr.  Tom  Hood,  son  of  the  great  humorist,  was 
an  intimate  friend — as  well  as  for  Punch;  his  con 
tributions  to  the  former  being  printed  without  his 
signature.  If  he  had  been  permitted  to  remain 
until  the  close  of  his  season,  he  would  have  earned 
enough,  with  what  he  had  already,  to  attain  the  in 
dependence  which  was  his  aim  and  hope.  His  best 
friends  in  London  were  Charles  Reade,  Tom  Hood, 
Tom  Robertson,  the  dramatist,  Charles  Mathews, 
the  comedian,  Tom  Taylor  and  Arthur  Sketchley. 
He  did  not  meet  Mr.  Dickens,  though  Mr.  Andrew 
Haliday,  Dickens'  familiar,  was  also  his  intimate. 
He  was  much  persecuted  by  lion  hunters,  and 
therefore  had  to  keep  his  lodgings  something  of  a 
mystery. 

So  little  is  known  of  Artemus  Ward  that  some 
biographic  particulars  may  not  in  this  connection 
be  out  of  place  or  lacking  in  interest. 

Charles  F.  Browne  was  born  at  Waterford, 
Maine,  the  15th  of  July,  1833.  His  father  was  a 

[115] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

state  senator,  a  probate  judge,  and  at  one  time  a 
wealthy  citizen;  but  at  his  death,  when  his  famous 
son  was  yet  a  lad,  left  his  family  little  or  no  prop 
erty.  Charles  apprenticed  himself  to  a  printer,  and 
served  out  his  time,  first  in  Springfield  and  then  in 
Boston.  In  the  latter  city  he  made  the  acquaintance 
of  Shilaber,  Ben  Perley  Poore,  Halpine,  and 
others,  and  tried  his  hand  as  a  "sketchist"  for  a 
volume  edited  by  Mrs.  Partington.  His  early  ef 
fusions  bore  the  signature  of  "Chub."  From  the 
Hub  he  emigrated  to  the  West.  At  Toledo,  Ohio, 
he  worked  as  a  "typo"  and  later  as  a  "local"  on  a 
Toledo  newspaper.  Then  he  went  to  Cleveland, 
where  as  city  editor  of  the  Plain  Dealer  he  began 
the  peculiar  vein  from  which  still  later  he  worked 
so  successfully. 

The  soubriquet  "Artemus  Ward,"  was  not  taken 
from  the  Revolutionary  general.  It  was  suggested 
by  an  actual  personality.  In  an  adjoining  town  to 
Cleveland  there  was  a  snake  charmer  who  called 
himself  Artemus  Ward,  an  ignorant  witling  or 
half-wit,  the  laughing  stock  of  the  countryside. 
Browne's  first  communication  over  the  signature  of 
Artemus  Ward  purported  to  emanate  from  this 
person,  and  it  succeeded  so  well  that  he  kept  it  up. 
[116] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

He  widened  the  conception  as  he  progressed.  It 
was  not  long  before  his  sketches  began  to  be  copied 
and  he  became  a  newspaper  favorite.  He  remained 
in  Cleveland  from  1857  to  1860,  when  he  was  called 
to  New  York  to  take  the  editorship  of  a  venture 
called  Vanity  Fair.  This  died  soon  after.  But  he 
did  not  die  with  it.  A  year  later,  in  the  fall  of 
1861,  he  made  his  appearance  as  a  lecturer  at  New 
London,  and  met  with  encouragement.  Then  he 
set  out  en  tour,  returned  to  the  metropolis,  hired  a 
hall  and  opened  with  "the  show."  Thence  onward 
all  went  well. 

The  first  money  he  made  was  applied  to  the  pur 
chase  of  the  old  family  homestead  in  Maine,  which 
he  presented  to  his  mother.  The  payments  on  this 
being  completed,  he  bought  himself  a  little  nest  on 
the  Hudson,  meaning,  as  he  said,  to  settle  down  and 
perhaps  to  marry.  But  his  dreams  were  not  destined 
to  be  fulfilled. 

Thus,  at  the  outset  of  a  career  from  which  much 
was  to  be  expected,  a  man,  possessed  of  rare  and 
original  qualities  of  head  and  heart,  sank  out  of  the 
sphere  in  which  at  that  time  he  was  the  most  promi 
nent  figure.  There  was  then  no  Mark  Twain  or 

[117] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Bret  Harte.  His  rivals  were  such  humorists  as 
Orpheus  C.  Kerr,  Nasby,  Asa  Hartz,  The  Fat  Con 
tributor,  John  Happy,  Mrs.  Partington,  Bill  Arp 
and  the  like,  who  are  now  mostly  forgotten. 

Artemus  Ward  wrote  little,  but  he  made  good 
and  left  his  mark.  Along  with  the  queer  John 
Phoenix  his  writings  survived  the  deluge  that  fol 
lowed  them.  He  poured  out  the  wine  of  life  in  a 
limpid  stream.  It  may  be  fairly  said  that  he  did 
much  to  give  permanency  and  respectability  to  the 
style  of  literature  of  which  he  was  at  once  a  brilliant 
illustrator  and  illustration.  His  was  a  short  life 
indeed,  though  a  merry  one,  and  a  sad  death.  In 
a  strange  land,  yet  surrounded  by  admiring  friends, 
about  to  reach  the  coveted  independence  he  had 
looked  forward  to  so  long,  he  sank  to  rest,  his  dust 
mingling  with  that  of  the  great  Thomas  Hood, 
alongside  of  whom  he  was  laid  in  Kensal  Green. 


[118] 


CHAPTER  THE  FIFTH 

MARK    TWAIN — THE    ORIGINAL    OF    COLONEL    MUL 
BERRY    SELLERS THE    "EARL    OF    DURHAM^ 

SOME      NOCTES      AMBROSIANAE — A      JOKE      ON 
MURAT  HALSTEAD 


MARK  TWAIN  came  down  to  the  footlights 
long  after  Artemus  Ward  had  passed  from 
the  scene ;  but  as  an  American  humorist  with  whom 
during  half  a  century  I  was  closely  intimate  and 
round  whom  many  of  my  London  experiences  re 
volve,  it  may  be  apropos  to  speak  of  him  next  after 
his  elder.  There  was  not  lacking  a  certain  likeness 
between  them. 

Samuel  L.  Clemens  and  I  were  connected  by  a 
domestic  tie,  though  before  either  of  us  were  born 
the  two  families  on  the  maternal  side  had  been 
neighbors  and  friends.  An  uncle  of  his  married  an 
aunt  of  mine — the  children  of  this  marriage  cousins 
in  common  to  us — albeit,  this  apart,  we  were  life- 

[119] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

time  cronies.  He  always  contended  that  we  were 
"bloodkin." 

Notwithstanding  that  when  Mark  Twain  ap 
peared  east  of  the  Alleghanies  and  north  of  the 
Blue  Ridge  he  showed  the  weather-beating  of  the 
west,  the  bizarre  alike  of  the  pilot  house  and  the 
mining  camp  very  much  in  evidence,  he  came  of 
decent  people  on  both  sides  of  the  house.  The 
Clemens  and  the  Lamptons  were  of  good  old  Eng 
lish  stock.  Toward  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century  three  younger  scions  of  the  Manor  of  Dur 
ham  migrated  from  the  County  of  Durham  to 
Virginia  and  thence  branched  out  into  Tennessee, 
Kentucky  and  Missouri. 

His  mother  was  the  loveliest  old  aristocrat  with 
a  taking  drawl,  a  drawl  that  was  high-bred  and 
patrician,  not  rustic  and  plebeian,  which  her  famous 
son  inherited.  All  the  women  of  that  ilk  were 
gentlewomen.  The  literary  and  artistic  instinct 
which  attained  its  fruition  in  him  had  percolated 
through  the  veins  of  a  long  line  of  silent  singers, 
of  poets  and  painters,  unborn  to  the  world  of  ex 
pression  till  he  arrived  upon  the  scene. 

These  joint  cousins  of  ours  embraced  an  exceed 
ingly  large,  varied  and  picturesque  assortment. 
[120] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Their  idiosyncrasies  were  a  constant  source  of 
amusement  to  us.  Just  after  the  successful  pro 
duction  of  his  play,  The  Gilded  Age,  and  the  up 
roarious  hit  of  the  comedian,  Raymond,  in  the  lead 
ing  role,  I  received  a  letter  from  him  in  which  he 
told  me  he  had  made  in  Colonel  Mulberry  Sellers 
a  close  study  of  one  of  these  kinsmen  and  thought 
he  had  drawn  him  to  the  life.  "But  for  the  love 
o'  God,"  he  said,  "don't  whisper  it,  for  he  would 
never  understand  or  forgive  me,  if  he  did  not  thrash 
me  on  sight." 

The  pathos  of  the  part,  and  not  its  comic  aspects, 
had  most  impressed  him.  He  designed  and  wrote 
it  for  Edwin  Booth.  From  the  first  and  always 
he  was  disgusted  by  the  Raymond  portrayal.  Ex 
cept  for  its  popularity  and  money-making,  he 
would  have  withdrawn  it  from  the  stage  as,  in  a 
fit  of  pique,  Raymond  himself  did  while  it  was  still 
packing  the  theaters. 

The  original  Sellers  had  partly  brought  him  up 
and  had  been  very  good  to  him.  Ai  second  Don 
Quixote  in  appearance  and  not  unlike  the  knight  of 
La  Mancha  in  character,  it  would  have  been  safe 
for  nobody  to  laugh  at  James  Lampton,  or  by  the 
slightest  intimation,  look  or  gesture  to  treat  him 


"MARSE  HENRY'* 

with  inconsideration,  or  any  proposal  of  his,  how 
ever  preposterous,  with  levity. 

He  once  came  to  visit  me  upon  a  public  occasion 
and  during  a  function.  I  knew  that  I  must  intro 
duce  him,  and  with  all  possible  ceremony,  to  my 
colleagues.  He  was  very  queer;  tall  and  peaked, 
wearing  a  black,  swallow-tailed  suit,  shiny  with  age, 
and  a  silk  hat,  bound  with  black  crepe  to  conceal  its 
rustiness,  not  to  indicate  a  recent  death;  but  his 
linen  as  spotless  as  new-fallen  snow.  I  had  my 
fears.  Happily  the  company,  quite  dazed  by  the 
apparition,  proved  decorous  to  solemnity,  and  the 
kind  old  gentleman,  pleased  with  himself  and 
proud  of  his  "distinguished  young  kinsman,"  went 
away  highly  gratified. 

Not  long  after  this  one  of  his  daughters — pretty 
girls  they  were,  too,  and  in  charm  altogether 
worthy  of  their  Cousin  Sam  Clemens — was  to  be 
married,  and  Sellers  wrote  me  a  stately  summons, 
all-embracing,  though  stiff  and  formal,  such  as  a 
baron  of  the  Middle  Ages  might  have  indited  to  his 
noble  relative,  the  field  marshal,  bidding  him  bring 
his  good  lady  and  his  retinue  and  abide  within  the 
castle  until  the  festivities  were  ended,  though  in 
this  instance  the  castle  was  a  suburban  cottage 
[122] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

scarcely  big  enough  to  accommodate  the  bridal 
couple.  I  showed  the  bombastic  but  hospitable  and 
genuine  invitation  to  the  actor  Raymond,  who 
chanced  to  be  playing  in  Louisville  when  it  reached 
me.  He  read  it  through  with  care  and  reread  it. 

"Do  you  know,"  said  he,  "it  makes  me  want  to 
cry.  That  is  not  the  man  I  am  trying  to  imper 
sonate  at  all." 

Be  sure  it  was  not;  for  there  was  nothing  funny 
about  the  spiritual  being  of  Mark  Twain's  Colonel 
Mulberry  Sellers ;  he  was  as  brave  as  a  lion  and  as 
upright  as  Sam  Clemens  himself. 

When  a  very  young  man,  living  in  a  woodland 
cabin  down  in  the  Pennyrile  region  of  Kentucky, 
with  a  wife  he  adored  and  two  or  three  small  chil 
dren,  he  was  so  carried  away  by  an  unexpected 
windfall  that  he  lingered  overlong  in  the  nearby 
village,  dispensing  a  royal  hospitality;  in  point  of 
fact,  he  "got  on  a  spree."  Two  or  three  days  passed 
before  he  regained  possession  of  himself.  When  at 
last  he  reached  home,  he  found  his  wife  ill  in  bed 
and  the  children  nearly  starved  for  lack  of  food. 
He  said  never  a  word,  but  walked  out  of  the  cabin, 
tied  himself  to  a  tree,  and  was  wildly  horsewhipping 
himself  when  the  cries  of  the  frightened  family  sum- 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

moned  the  neighbors  and  he  was  brought  to  reason. 
He  never  touched  an  intoxicating  drop  from  that 

day  to  his  death. 

II 

Another  one  of  our  fantastic  mutual  cousins  was 
the  "Earl  of  Durham."  I  ought  to  say  that  Mark 
Twain  and  I  grew  up  on  old  wives'  tales  of  estates 
and  titles,  which,  maybe  due  to  a  kindred  sense  of 
humor  in  both  of  us,  we  treated  with  shocking 
irreverence.  It  happened  some  fifty  years  ago  that 
there  turned  up,  first  upon  the  plains  and  afterward 
in  New  York  and  Washington,  a  lineal  descendant 
of  the  oldest  of  the  Virginia  Lamptons — lie  had 
somehow  gotten  hold  of  or  had  fabricated  a  bundle 
of  documents — who  was  what  a  certain  famous 
American  would  have  called  a  "corker."  He  wore 
a  sombrero  with  a  rattlesnake  for  a  band,  and  a  belt 
with  a  couple  of  six-shooters,  and  described  himself 
and  claimed  to  be  the  Earl  of  Durham. 

"He  touched  me  for  a  tenner  the  first  time  I  ever 
saw  him,"  drawled  Mark  to  me,  "and  I  coughed  it 
up  and  have  been  coughing  them  up,  whenever  he's 
around,  with  punctuality  and  regularity." 

The  "Earl"  was  indeed  a  terror,  especially  when 
he  had  been  drinking.  His  belief  in  his  peerage 
[124] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

was  as  absolute  as  Colonel  Sellers'  in  his  millions. 
All  he  wanted  was  money  enough  "to  get  over 
there"  and  "state  his  case."  During  the  Tichborne 
trial  Mark  Twain  and  I  were  in  London,  and  one 
day  he  said  to  me: 

"I  have  investigated  this  Durham  business  down 
at  the  Herald's  office.  There's  nothing  to  it.  The 
Lamptons  passed  out  of  the  Demesne  of  Durham  a 
hundred  years  ago.  They  had  long  before  dissi 
pated  the  estates.  Whatever  the  title,  it  lapsed. 
The  present  earldom  is  a  new  creation,  not  the 
same  family  at  all.  But,  I  tell  you  what,  if  you'll 
put  up  five  hundred  dollars  I'll  put  up  five  hundred 
more,  we'll  fetch  our  chap  across  and  set  him  in  as 
a  claimant,  and,  my  word  for  it,  Kenealy's  fat  boy 
won't  be  a  marker  to  him!" 

He  was  so  pleased  with  his  conceit  that  later 
along  he  wrote  a  novel  and  called  it  The  Claimant. 
It  is  the  only  one  of  his  books,  though  I  never  told 
him  so,  that  I  could  not  enjoy.  Many  years  after, 
I  happened  to  see  upon  a  hotel  register  in  Rome 
these  entries:  "The  Earl  of  Durham,"  and  in  the 
same  handwriting  just  below  it,  "Lady  Anne 
Lambton"  and  "The  Hon.  Reginald  Lambton." 
So  the  Lambtons — they  spelled  it  with  a  b  instead 

C125] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

of  a  p — were  yet  in  the  peerage.  A  Lambton  was 
Earl  of  Durham.  The  next  time  I  saw  Mark  I 
rated  him  on  his  deception.  He  did  not  defend 
himself,  said  something  about  its  being  necessary 
to  perfect  the  joke. 

"Did  you  ever  meet  this  present  peer  and  possible 
usurper?"  I  asked. 

"No,"  he  answered,  "I  never  did,  but  if  he  had 
called  on  me,  I  would  have  had  him  come  up." 

Ill 

His  mind  turned  ever  to  the  droll.  Once  in  Lon 
don  I  was  living  with  my  family  at  103  Mount 
Street.  Between  103  and  102  there  was  the 
parochial  workhouse,  quite  a  long  and  imposing 
edifice.  One  evening,  upon  coming  in  from  an  out 
ing,  I  found  a  letter  he  had  written  on  the  sitting- 
room  table.  He  had  left  it  with  his  card.  He  spoke 
of  the  shock  he  had  received  upon  finding  that  next 
to  102 — presumably  103 — was  the  workhouse.  He 
had  loved  me,  but  had  always  feared  that  I  would 
end  by  disgracing  the  family — being  hanged  or 
something — but  the  "work'us,"  that  was  beyond 
him;  he  had  not  thought  it  would  come  to  that.  And 
so  on  through  pages  of  horseplay;  his  relief  on 
[126] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

ascertaining  the  truth  and  learning  his  mistake,  his 
regret  at  not  finding  me  at  home,  closing  with  a 
dinner  invitation. 

It  was  at  Geneva,  Switzerland,  that  I  received  a 
long,  overflowing  letter,  full  of  flamboyant  oddi 
ties,  written  from  London.  Two  or  three  hours 
later  came  a  telegram.  "Burn  letter.  Blot  it  from 
your  memory.  Susie  is  dead." 

How  much  of  melancholy  lay  hidden  behind  the 
mask  of  his  humour  it  would  be  hard  to  say.  His 
griefs  were  tempered  by  a  vein  of  stoicism.  He 
was  a  medley  of  contradictions.  Unconventional 
to  the  point  of  eccentricity,  his  sense  of  his  proper 
dignity  was  sound  and  sufficient.  Though  lavish 
in  the  use  of  money,  he  had  a  full  realization  of  its 
value  and  made  close  contracts  for  his  work.  Like 
Sellers,  his  mind  soared  when  it  sailed  financial  cur 
rents.  He  lacked  acute  business  judgment  in  the 
larger  things,  while  an  excellent  economist  in  the 
lesser. 

His  marriage  was  the  most  brilliant  stroke  of  his 
life.  He  got  the  woman  of  all  the  world  he  most 
needed,  a  truly  lovely  and  wise  helpmate,  who  kept 
him  in  bounds  and  headed  him  straight  and  right 
while  she  lived.  She  was  the  best  of  housewives 

[127] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

and  mothers,  andj  the  safest  of  counsellors  and 
critics.  She  knew  his  worth;  she  appreciated  his 
genius;  she  understood  his  limitations  and  angles. 
Her  death  was  a  grievous  disaster  as  well  as  a 
staggering  blow.  He  never  wholly  recovered  from 
it. 

IV 

It  was  in  the  early  seventies  that  Mark  Twain 
dropped  into  New  York,  where  there  was  already 
gathered  a  congenial  group  to  meet  and  greet  him. 
John  Hay,  quoting  old  Jack  Dade's  description  of 
himself,  was  wont  to  speak  of  this  group  as  "of 
high  aspirations  and  peregrinations."  It  radiated 
between  Franklin  Square,  where  Joseph  W.  Har 
per — "Joe  Brooklyn,"  we  called  him — reigned  in 
place  of  his  uncle,  Fletcher  Harper,  the  man  of 
genius  among  the  original  Harper  Brothers,  and 
the  Lotos  Club,  then  in  Irving  Place,  and  Delmoni- 
co's,  at  the  corner  of  Fifth  Avenue  and  Fourteenth 
Street,  with  Sutherland's  in  Liberty  Street  for  a 
downtown  place  of  luncheon  resort,  not  to  forget 
D orlon's  in  Fulton  Market. 

The  Harper  contingent,  beside  its  chief,  em 
braced  Tom  Nast  and  William  A.  Seaver,  whom 
John  Russell  Young  named  "Papa  Pendennis," 
£128] 


GEXERAL  LEOXIDAS  POLK LIEUTEXAXT  GENERAL 

C.    S.   A. KILLED    IX    GEORGIA    JUXE    14,    1864 

P.    E.    BTSTTOP    OF    LOUISIANA 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

and  pictured  as  "a  man  of  letters  among  men  of 
the  world  and  a  man  of  the  world  among  men  of 
letters/'  a  very  apt  phrase  appropriated  from  Doc 
tor  Johnson,  and  Major  Constable,  a  giant,  who 
looked  like  a  dragoon  and  not  a  bookman,  yet  had 
known  Sir  Walter  Scott  and  was  sprung  from  the 
family  of  Edinburgh  publishers.  Bret  Harte  had 
but  newly  arrived  from  California.  Whitelaw 
Reid,  though  still  subordinate  to  Greeley,  was  be 
ginning  to  make  himself  felt  in  journalism.  John 
Hay  played  high  priest  to  the  revels.  Occasionally 
I  made  a  pious  pilgrimage  to  the  delightful  shrine. 
Truth  to  tell,  it  emulated  rather  the  gods  than 
the  graces,  though  all  of  us  had  literary  leanings  of 
one  sort  and  another,  especially  late  at  night;  and 
Sam  Bowles  would  come  over  from  Springfield 
and  Murat  Halstead  from  Cincinnati  to  join  us. 
Howells,  always  something  of  a  prig,  living  in  Bos 
ton,  held  himself  at  too  high  account ;  but  often  we 
had  Joseph  Jefferson,  then  in  the  heyday  of  his 
career,  with  once  in  a  while  Edwin  Booth,  who 
could  not  quite  trust  himself  to  go  our  gait.  The 
fine  fellows  we  caught  from  oversea  were  innumer 
able,  from  the  elder  Sothern  and  Sala  and  Yates 
to  Lord  Dufferin  and  Lord  Houghton.  Times 

[129] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

went  very  well  those  days,  and  whilst  some  looked 
on  askance,  notably  Curtis  and,  rather  oddly,  Sted- 
man,  and  thought  we  were  wasting  time  and  con- 
vivializing  more  than  was  good  for  us,  we  were 
mostly  young  and  hearty,  ranging  from  thirty  to 
five  and  forty  years  of  age,  with  amazing  capabili 
ties  both  for  work  and  play,  and  I  cannot  recall 
that  any  hurt  to  any  of  us  came  of  it. 

Although  robustious,  our  fribbles  were  harm 
less  enough — ebullitions  of  animal  spirit,  some 
times  perhaps  of  gaiety  unguarded — though  each 
shade,  treading  the  Celestian  way,  as  most  of  them 
do,  and  recurring  to  those  Noctes  Ambrosianae, 
might  e'en  repeat  to  the  other  the  words  on  a  mem 
orable  occasion  addressed  by  Curran  to  Lord 
Avonmore: 

"We  spent  them  not  in  toys  or  lust  or  wine; 

But  search  of  deep  philosophy, 

Wit,  eloquence  and  poesy — 

*Arts  which  I  loved,  for  they,  my  friend,  were  thine." 


Mark  Twain  was  the  life  of  every  company  and 
all  occasions.    I  remember  a  practical  joke  of  his 
[130] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

suggestion  played  upon  Murat  Halstead.  A  party 
of  us  were  supping  after  the  theater  at  the  old 
Brevoort  House.  A  card  was  brought  to  me  from 
a  reporter  of  the  World.  I  was  about  to  deny 
myself,  when  Mark  Twain  said: 

"Give  it  to  me,  I'll  fix  it,"  and  left  the  table. 

Presently  he  came  to  the  door  and  beckoned  me 
out. 

"I  represented  myself  as  your  secretary  and  told 
this  man,"  said  he,  "that  you  were  not  here,  but 
that  if  Mr.  Halstead  would  answer  just  as  well  I 
would  fetch  him.  The  fellow  is  as  innocent  as  a  lamb 
and  doesn't  know  either  of  you.  I  am  going  to 
introduce  you  as  Halstead  and  we'll  have  some 
fun." 

No  sooner  said  than  done.  The  reporter  proved 
to  be  a  little  bald-headed  cherub  newly  arrived  from 
the  isle  of  dreams,  and  I  lined  out  to  him  a  column 
or  more  of  very  hot  stuff,  reversing  Halstead  in 
every  opinion.  I  declared  him  in  favor  of  paying 
the  national  debt  in  greenbacks.  Touching  the  sec 
tional  question,  which  was  then  the  burning  issue 
of  the  time,  I  made  the  mock  Halstead  say:  "The 
'bloody  shirt'  is  only  a  kind  of  Pickwickian  battle 
cry.  It  is  convenient  during  political  campaigns 

[131] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

and  on  election  day.  Perhaps  you  do  not  know 
that  I  am  myself  of  dyed-in-the-wool  Southern  and 
secession  stock.  My  father  and  grandfather  came 
to  Ohio  from  South  Carolina  just  before  I  was 
born.  Naturally  I  have  no  sectional  prejudices, 
but  I  live  in  Cincinnati  and  I  am  a  Republican." 

There  was  not  a  little  more  of  the  same  sort. 
Just  how  it  passed  through  the  World  office  I 
know  not;  but  it  actually  appeared.  On  returning 
to  the  table  I  told  the  company  what  Mark  Twain 
and  I  had  done.  They  thought  I  was  joking. 
Without  a  word  to  any  of  us,  next  day  Halstead 
wrote  a  note  to  the  World  repudiating  the  inter 
view,  and  the  World  printed  his  disclaimer  with 
a  line  which  said:  "When  Mr.  Halstead  conversed 
with  our  reporter  he  had  dined."  It  was  too  good 
to  keep.  A  day  or  two  later,  John  Hay  wrote  an 
amusing  story  for  the  Tribune,  which  set  Halstead 
right. 

Mark  Twain's  place  in  literature  is  not  for  me 
to  fix.  Some  one  has  called  him  "The  Lincoln  of 
letters."  That  is  striking,  suggestive  and  apposite. 
The  genius  of  Clemens  and  the  genius  of  Lincoln 
possessed  a  kinship  outside  the  circumstances  of 
their  early  lives;  the  common  lack  of  tools  to  work 
[132] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

with;  the  privations  and  hardships  to  be  endured 
and  to  overcome;  the  way  ahead  through  an  un- 
blazed  and  trackless  forest;  every  footstep  over  a 
stumbling  block  and  each  effort  saddled  with  a 
handicap.  But  they  got  there,  both  of  them,  they 
got  there,  and  mayhap  somewhere  beyond  the  stars 
the  light  of  their  eyes  is  shining  down  upon  u$ 
even  as,  amid  the  thunders  of  a  world  tempest,  we 
are  not  wholly  forgetful  of  them. 


[133] 


CHAPTER  THE  SIXTH 

HOUSTON     AND     WIGFALL    OF     TEXAS — STEPHEN    A. 

DOUGLAS THE  TWADDLE  ABOUT  PURITANS  AND 

CAVALIERS — ANDREW    JOHNSON    AND    JOHN    C. 
BRECKENRIDGE 


THE  National  Capitol — old  men's  fancies 
fondly  turn  to  thoughts  of  youth  —  was 
picturesque  in  its  personalities  if  not  in  its  architec 
ture.  By  no  means  the  least  striking  of  these  was 
General  and  Senator  Sam  Houston,  of  Texas.  In 
his  life  of  adventure  truth  proved  very  much 
stranger  than  fiction. 

The  handsomest  of  men,  tall  and  stately,  he  could 
pass  no  way  without  attracting  attention ;  strangers 
in  the  Senate  gallery  first  asked  to  have  him  pointed 
out  to  them,  and  seeing  him  to  all  appearance 
idling  his  time  with  his  jacknife  and  bits  of  soft 
wood  which  he  whittled  into  various  shapes  of 
hearts  and  anchors  for  distribution  among  his  lady 
[134] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

acquaintances,  they  usually  went  away  thinking 
him  a  queer  old  man.  So  inded  he  was;  yet  on  his 
feet  and  in  action  singularly  impressive,  and,  when 
he  chose,  altogether  the  statesman  and  orator. 

There  united  in  him  the  spirits  of  the  troubadour 
and  the  spearman.  Ivanhoe  was  not  more  gallant 
nor  Bois-Guilbert  fiercer.  But  the  valor  and  the 
prowess  were  tempered  by  humor.  Below  the  surg 
ing  subterranean  flood  that  stirred  and  lifted  him 
to  high  attempt,  he  was  a  comedian  who  had  tales 
to  tell,  and  told  them  wondrous  well.  On  a  lazy 
summer  afternoon  on  the  shady  side  of  Willard's 
Hotel — the  Senate  not  in  session — he  might  be 
seen,  an  admiring  group  about  him,  spinning  these 
yarns,  mostly  of  personal  experience — rarely  if 
ever  repeating  himself — and  in  tone,  gesture  and 
grimace  reproducing  the  drolleries  of  the  back 
woods,  which  from  boyhood  had  been  his  home. 

He  spared  not  himself.  According  to  his  own 
account  he  had  been  in  the  early  days  of  his  Texas 
career  a  drunkard.  "Everybody  got  drunk,"  I  once 
heard  Jiim  say,  referring  to  the  beginning  of  the 
Texas  revolution,  as  he  gave  a  side-splitting  picture 
of  that  bloody  episode,  "and  I  realized  that  some 
body  must  get  sober  and  keep  sober." 

[135] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

From  the  hour  of  that  realization,  when  he 
"swore  off,"  to  the  hour  of  his  death  he  never 
touched  intoxicants  of  any  sort. 

He  had  fought  under  Jackson,  had  served  two 
terms  in  Congress  and  had  been  elected  governor 
of  Tennessee  before  he  was  forty.  Then  he  fell  in 
love.  The  young  lady  was  a  beautiful  girl,  well 
born  and  highly  educated,  a  schoolmate  of  my 
mother's  elder  sister.  She  was  persuaded  by  her 
family  to  throw  over  an  obscure  young  man  whom 
she  preferred,  and  to  marry  a  young  man  so  eligible 
and  distinguished. 

He  took  her  to  Nashville,  the  state  capital. 
There  were  rounds  of  gayety.  Three  months 
passed.  Of  a  sudden  the  little  town  woke  to  the 
startling  rumor,  which  proved  to  be  true,  that  the 
brilliant  young  couple  had  come  to  a  parting  of 
the  ways.  The  wife  had  returned  to  her  people. 
The  husband  had  resigned  his  office  and  was  gone, 
no  one  knew  where. 

A  few  years  later  Mrs.  Houston  applied  for  a 
divorce,  which  in  those  days  had  to  be  granted  by 
the  state  legislature.  Inevitably  reports  derogatory 
to  her  had  got  abroad.  Almost  the  first  tidings 
of  Governor  Houston's  whereabouts  were  con- 
[136] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

tained  in  a  letter  he  wrote  from  somewhere  in  the 
Indian  country  to  my  father,  a  member  of  the  legis 
lature  to  whom  Mrs.  Houston  had  applied,  in  which 
he  said  that  these  reports  had  come  to  his  ears. 
"They  are,"  he  wrote,  "as  false  as  hell.  If  they  be 
not  stopped  I  will  return  to  Tennessee  and  have 
the  heart's  blood  of  him  who  repeats  them.  A 
nobler,  purer  woman  never  lived.  She  should  be 
promptly  given  the  divorce  she  asks.  I  alone  am 
to  blame." 

She  married  again,  though  not  the  lover  she  had 
discarded.  I  knew  her  in  her  old  age — a  gentle, 
placid  lady,  in  whose  face  I  used  to  fancy  I  could 
read  lines  of  sorrow  and  regret.  He,  to  close  this 
chapter,  likewise  married  again  a  wise  and 
womanly  woman  who  bore  him  many  children  and 
with  whom  he  lived  happy  ever  after.  Meanwhile, 
however,  he  had  dwelt  with  the  Indians  and  had 
become  an  Indian  chief.  "Big  Drunk,  they  called 
me,"  he  said  to  his  familiars.  His  enemies  averred 
that  he  brought  into  the  world  a  whole  tribe  of  half- 
breeds. 

II 

Houston  was  a  rare  performer  before  a  popular 
audience.  His  speech  abounded  with  argumenta- 

[137] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

tive  appeal  and  bristled  with  illustrative  anecdote, 
and,  when  occasion  required,  with  apt  repartee. 

Once  an  Irishman  in  the  crowd  bawled  out,  "ye 
were  goin'  to  sell  Texas  to  England." 

Houston  paused  long  enough  to  center  attention 
upon  the  quibble  and  then  said:  "My  friend,  I  first 
tried,  unsuccessfully,  to  have  the  United  States  take 
Texas  as  a  gift.  Not  until  I  threatened  to  turn 
Texas  over  to  England  did  I  finally  succeed.  There 
may  be  within  the  sound  of  my  voice  some  who 
have  knowledge  of  sheep  culture.  They  have  doubt 
less  seen  a  motherless  lamb  put  to  the  breast  of  a 
cross  old  ewe  who  refused  it  suck.  Then  the  wise 
shepherd  calls  his  dog  and  there  is  no  further 
trouble.  My  friend,  England  was  my  dog." 

He  was  inveighing  against  the  New  York 
Tribune.  Having  described  Horace  Greeley  as 
the  sum  of  all  villainy — "whose  hair  is  white,  whose 
skin  is  white,  whose  eyes  are  white,  whose  clothes 
are  white,  and  whose  liver  is  in  my  opinion  of  the 
same  color" — he  continued:  "The  assistant  editor 
of  the  Try-bune  is  Robinson — Solon  Robinson. 
He  is  an  Irishman,  an  Orange  Irishman,  a  red- 
haired  Irishman!"  Casting  his  eye  over  the  audi 
ence  and  seeing  quite  a  sprinkling  of  redheads,  and 
[138] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

realizing  that  he  had  prepetrated  a  slip  of  tongue, 
he  added :  "Fellow  citizens,  when  I  say  that  Rob 
inson  is  a  red-haired  Irishman  I  mean  no  disrespect 
to  persons  whose  hair  is  of  that  color.  I  have  been 
a  close  observer  of  men  and  women  for  thirty 
years,  and  I  never  knew  a  red-haired  man  who  was 
not  an  honest  man,  nor  a  red-headed  woman  who 
was  not  a  virtuous  woman ;  and  I  give  it  you  as  my 
candid  opinion  that  had  it  not  been  for  Robinson's 
red  hair  he  would  have  been  hanged  long  ago." 

His  pathos  was  not  far  behind  his  humor — 
though  he  used  it  sparingly.  At  a  certain  town  in 
Texas  there  lived  a  desperado  who  had  threatened 
to  kill  him  on  sight.  The  town  was  not  on  the 
route  of  his  speaking  dates  but  he  went  out  of  his 
way  to  include  it.  A  great  concourse  assembled 
to  hear  him.  He  spoke  in  the  open  air  and,  as  he 
began,  observed  his  man  leaning  against  a  tree 
armed  to  the  teeth  and  waiting  for  him  to  finish. 
After  a  few  opening  remarks,  he  dropped  into  the 
reminiscential.  He  talked  of  the  old  times  in 
Texas.  He  told  in  thrilling  terms  of  the  Alamo 
and  of  Goliad.  There  was  not  a  dry  eye  in  earshot. 
Then  he  grew  personal. 

"I  see  Tom  Gilligan  over  yonder.  A  braver  man 

[139] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

never  lived  than  Tom  Gilligan.  He  fought  by  my 
side  at  San  Jacinto.  Together  we  buried  poor  Bill 
Holman.  But  for  his  skill  and  courage  I  should 
not  be  here  to-day.  He " 

There  was  a  stir  in  front.  Gilligan  had  thrown 
away  his  knife  and  gun  and  was  rushing  unarmed 
through  the  crowd,  tears  streaming  down  his  face. 

"For  God's  sake,  Houston,"  he  cried,  "don't  say 
another  word  and  forgive  me  my  cowardly  inten 
tion." 

From  that  time  to  his  death  Tom  Gilligan  was 
Houston's  devoted  friend. 

General  Houston  vdted  against  the  KansasJ- 
Nebraska  Bill,  and  as  a  consequence  lost  his  seat 
in  the  Senate.  It  was  thought,  and  freely  said, 
that  for  good  and  all  he  was  down  and  out.  He 
went  home  and  announced  himself  a  candidate  for 
governor  of  Texas. 

The  campaign  that  followed  was  of  unexampled 
bitterness.  The  secession  wave  was  already  mount 
ing  high.  Houston  was  an  uncompromising  Union 
ist.  His  defeat  was  generally  expected.  But  there 
was  no  beating  such  a  man  in  a  fair  and  square  con 
test  before  the  people.  When  the  votes  were 
counted  he  led  his  competitor  by  a  big  majority. 
[140] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

As  governor  he  refused  two  years  later  to  sign  the 
ordinance  of  secession  and  was  deposed  from  office 
by  force.  He  died  before  the  end  of  the  war  which 
so  signally  vindicated  his  wisdom  and  verified  his 

forecast. 

ill 

Stephen  Arnold  Douglas  was  the  Charles  James 
Fox  of  American  politics.  He  was  not  a  gambler 
as  Fox  was.  But  he  went  the  other  gaits  and  was 
possessed  of  a  sweetness  of  disposition  which  made 
him,  like  Fox,  loved  where  he  was  personally 
known.  No  one  could  resist  the  bonhomie  of 
Douglas. 

They  are  not  all  Puritans  in  New  England. 
Catch  a  Yankee  off  his  base,  quite  away  from  home, 
and  he  can  be  as  gay  as  anybody.  Boston  and 
Charleston  were  in  high  party  times  nearest  alike 
of  any  two  American  cities. 

Douglas  was  a  Green  Mountain  boy.  He  was 
born  in  Vermont.  As  Seargent  Prentiss  had  done 
he  migrated  beyond  the  Alleghanies  before  he  came 
of  age,  settling  in  Illinois  as  Prentiss  had  settled 
in  Mississippi,  to  grow  into  a  typical  Westerner  as 
Prentiss  into  a  typical  Southerner. 

There  was  never  a  more  absurd  theory  than  that, 

[141] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

begot  of  sectional  aims  and  the  sectional  spirit, 
which  proposed  a  geographic  alignment  of  Cavalier 
and  Puritan.  When  sectionalism  had  brought  a 
kindred  people  to  blows  over  the  institution  of 
African  slavery  there  were  Puritans  who  fought  on 
the  Southern  side  and  Cavaliers  who  fought  on  the 
Northern  side.  What  was  Stonewall  Jackson  but 
a  Puritan?  What  were  Custer,  Stoneman  and 
Kearny  but  Cavaliers?  Wadsworth  was  as  abso 
lute  an  aristocrat  as  Hampton. 

In  the  old  days  before  the  war  of  sections  the 
South  was  full  of  typical  Southerners  of  Northern 
birth.  John  A.  Quitman,  who  went  from  New 
York,  and  Robert  J.  Walker,  who  went  from  Penn 
sylvania  to  Mississippi;  James  H.  Hammond, 
whose  father,  a  teacher,  went  from  Massachusetts 
to  South  Carolina.  John  Slidell,  born  and  bred  in 
New  York,  was  thirty  years  old  when  he  went  to 
Louisiana.  Albert  Sidney  Johnston,  the  rose  and 
expectancy  of  the  young  Confederacy — the  most 
typical  of  rebel  soldiers — had  not  a  drop  of  South 
ern  blood  in  his  veins,  born  in  Kentucky  a  few 
months  after  his  father  and  mother  had  arrived 
there  from  Connecticut.  The  list  might  be  ex 
tended  indefinitely. 
[142] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Climate,  which  has  something  to  do  with  tem 
perament,  has  not  so  much  to  do  with  character  as 
is  often  imagined.  All  of  us  are  more  or  less  the 
creatures  of  environment.  In  the  South  after  a 
fashion  the  duello  flourished.  Because  it  had  not 
flourished  in  the  North  there  rose  a  notion  that 
the  Northerners  would  not  fight.  It  proved  to 
those  who  thought  it  a  costly  mistake. 

Down  to  the  actual  secession  of  1860-61  the  issue 
of  issues — the  issue  behind  all  issues — was  the  pres 
ervation  of  the  Union.  Between  1820  and  1850,  by 
a  series  of  compromises,  largely  the  work  of  Mr. 
Clay,  its  threatened  disruption  had  been  averted. 
The  Kansas-Nebraska  Bill  put  a  sore  strain  upon 
conservative  elements  North  and  South.  The 
Whig  Party  went  to  pieces.  Mr.  Clay  passed  from 
the  scene.  Had  he  lived  until  the  presidential  elec 
tion  of  1852  he  would  have  given  his  support  to 
Franklin  Pierce,  as  Daniel  Webster  did.  Mr. 
Buchanan  was  ftiot  a  General  Jackson.  Judge 
Douglas,  who  sought  to  play  the  role  of  Mr.  Clay, 
was  too  late.  The  secession  leaders  held  the  whip 
hand  in  the  Gulf  States.  South  Carolina  was  to 
have  her  will  at  last.  Crash  came  the  shot  in 
Charleston  Harbor  and  the  fall  of  Sumter.  Curi- 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

ously  enough  two  persons  of  Kentucky  birth — 
Abraham  Lincoln  and  Jefferson  Davis — led  the 
rival  hosts  of  war  into  which  an  untenable  and  in 
defensible  system  of  slave  labor,  for  which  the  two 
sections  were  equally  responsible,  had  precipitated 
an  unwilling  people. 

Had  Judge  Douglas  lived  he  would  have  been 
Mr.  Lincoln's  main  reliance  in  Congress.  As  a 
debater  his  resources  and  prowess  were  rarely 
equaled  and  never  surpassed.  His  personality, 
whether  in  debate  or  private  conversation,  was  at 
tractive  in  the  highest  degree.  He  possessed  a  full, 
melodious  voice,  convincing  fervor  and  ready  wit. 

He  had  married  for  his  second  wife  the  reigning 
belle  of  the  National  Capital,  a  great-niece  of  Mrs. 
Madison,  whose  very  natural  ambitions  quickened 
and  spurred  his  own. 

It  was  fated  otherwise.  Like  Clay,  Webster, 
Calhoun  and  Elaine  he  was  to  be  denied  the 
Presidency.  The  White  House  was  barred  to  him. 
He  was  not  yet  fifty  when  he  died. 

Tidings  of  his  death  took  the  country  by  sur 
prise.  But  already  the  sectional  battle  was  on 
and  it  produced  only  a  momentary  impression,  to 
be  soon  forgotten  amid  the  overwhelming  tumult  of 
[144] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

events.  He  has  lain  in  his  grave  now  nearly  sixty 
years.  Upon  the  legislation  of  his  time  his  name 
was  writ  first  in  water  and  then  in  blood.  He  re 
ceived  less  than  his  desert  in  life  and  the  historic 
record  has  scarcely  done  justice  to  his  merit.  He 
was  as  great  a  party  leader  as  Clay.  He  could  hold 
his  own  in  debate  with  Webster  and  Calhoun.  He 
died  a  very  poor  man,  though  his  opportunity  for 
enrichment  by  perfectly  legitimate  means  were 
many.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  he  lacked  the  busi 
ness  instinct  and  set  no  value  upon  money; 
scrupulously  upright  in  his  official  dealing ;  holding 
his  senatorial  duties  above  all  price  and  beyond  the 
suspicion  of  dirt. 

Touching  a  matter  which  involved  a  certain  out 
lay  in  the  winter  of  1861,  he  laughingly  said  to  me: 
"I  haven't  the  wherewithal  to  pay  for  a  bottle  of 
whisky  and  shall  have  to  borrow  of  Arnold  Harris 
the  wherewithal  to  take  me  home." 

His  wife  was  a  glorious  creature.  Early  one 
morning  calling  at  their  home  to  see  Judge  Douglas 
I  was  ushered  into  the  library,  where  she  was  en 
gaged  setting  things  to  rights.  My  entrance  took 
her  by  surprise.  I  had  often  seen  her  in  full  ball 
room  regalia  and  in  becoming  out-of-door  costume, 

[145] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

but  as,  in  gingham  gown  and  white  apron,  she 
turned,  a  little  startled  by  my  sudden  appearance, 
smiles  and  blushes  in  spite  of  herself,  I  thought  I 
had  never  seen  any  woman  so  beautiful  before. 
She  married  again — the  lover  whom  gossip  said  she 
had  thrown  over  to  marry  Judge  Douglas — and  the 
story  went  that  her  second  marriage  was  not  very 

happy. 

rv 

In  the  midsummer  of  1859  the  burning  question 
among  the  newsmen  of  Washington  was  the  Cen 
tral  American  Mission.  England  and  France  had 
displayed  activity  in  that  quarter  and  it  was 
deemed  important  that  the  United  States  should 
sit  up  and  take  notice.  An  Isthmian  canal  was  be 
ing  considered. 

Speculation  was  rife  whom  Mr.  Buchanan  would 
send  to  represent  us.  The  press  gang  of  the  Na 
tional  Capital  was  all  at  sea.  There  was  scarcely 
a  Democratic  leader  of  national  prominence  whose 
name  was  not  mentioned  in  that  connection,  though 
speculation  from  day  to  day  eddied  round  Mr. 
James  S.  Rollins,  of  Missouri,  an  especial  friend 
of  the  President  and  a  most  accomplished  public 
man. 

[146] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

At  the  height  of  excitement  I  happened  to  be  in 
the  library  of  the  State  Department.  I  was  on  a 
step-ladder  in  quest  of  a  book  when  I  heard  a  mes 
senger  say  to  the  librarian:  "The  President  is  in 
the  Secretary's  room  and  wants  to  have  Mr. 
Dimitry  come  there  right  away."  An  inspiration 
shot  through  me  like  a  flash.  They  had  chosen 
Alexander  Dimitry  for  the  Central  American  Mis 
sion. 

He  was  the  official  translator  of  the  Department 
of  State.  Though  an  able  and  learned  man  he  was 
not  in  the  line  of  preferment.  He  was  without 
political  standing  or  backing  of  any  sort.  At  first 
blush  a  more  unlikely,  impossible  appointment 
could  hardly  be  suggested.  But — so  on  the  instant 
I  reasoned — he  was  peculiarly  fitted  in  his  own  per 
son  for  the  post  in  question.  Though  of  Greek 
origin  he  looked  like  a  Spaniard.  He  spoke  the 
Spanish  language  fluently.  He  had  the  procedure 
of  the  State  Department  at  his  finger's  ends.  He 
was  the  head  of  a  charming  domestic  fabric — his 
daughters  the  prettiest  girls  in  Washington.  Why 
not? 

I  climbed  down  from  my  stepladder  and  made 
tracks  for  the  office  of  the  afternoon  newspaper 

[147] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

for  which  I  was  doing  all-round  work.  I  was 
barely  on  time,  the  last  forms  being  locked  when  I 
got  there.  I  had  the  editorial  page  opened  and  in 
serted  at  the  top  of  the  leading  column  a  double- 
leaded  paragraph  announcing  that  the  agony  was 
over — that  the  Gordian  knot  was  cut — that  Alex 
ander  Dimitry  had  been  selected  as  Envoy  Extraor 
dinary  and  Minister  Plenipotentiary  to  the  Central 
American  States. 

It  proved  a  veritable  sensation  as  well  as  a 
notable  scoop.  To  increase  my  glory  the  corres 
pondents  of  the  New  York  dailies  scouted  it.  But 
in  a  day  or  two  it  was  officially  confirmed.  General 
Cass,  the  Secretary  of  State,  sent  for  me,  having 
learned  that  I  had  been  in  the  department  about 
the  time  of  the  consultation  between  the  President, 
himself  and  Mr.  Dimitry. 

"How  did  you  get  this?"  he  asked  rather  sharply. 

"Out  of  my  inner  consciousness,"  I  answered  with 
flippant  familiarity.  "Didn't  you  know  that  I  have 
what  they  call  second  sight?" 

The  old  gentleman  laughed  amiably.  "It  would 
seem  so,"  he  said,  and  sent  me  about  my  business 
without  further  inquiry. 

[148] 


'MARSE  HENRY" 


In  the  National  Capital  the  winter  of  1860-61 
was  both  stormy  and  nebulous.  Parties  were  at 
sea.  The  Northerners  in  Congress  had  learned  the 
trick  of  bullying  from  the  Southerners.  In  the 
Senate,  Chandler  was  a  match  for  Toombs ;  and  in 
the  House,  Thaddeus  Stevens  for  Keitt  and  La- 
mar.  All  of  them,  more  or  less,  were  playing  a 
game.  If  sectional  war,  which  was  incessantly 
threatened  by  the  two  extremes,  had  been  keenly 
realized  arid  seriously  considered  it  might  have  been 
averted.  Very  few  believed  that  it  would  come  to 
actual  war. 

A  convention  of  Border  State  men,  over  which 
ex-President  John  Tyler  presided,  was  held  in 
Washington.  It  might  as  well  have  been  held  at 
the  North  Pole.  Moderate  men  were  brushed 
aside,  their  counsels  whistled  down  the  wind.  There 
was  a  group  of  Senators,  headed  by  Wigfall  of 
Texas,  who  meant  disunion  and  war,  and  another 
group,  headed  by  Seward,  Hale  and  Chase,  who 
had  been  goaded  up  to  this.  Reading  contemporary 
history  and,  seeing  the  high-mightiness  with  which 
the  Germans  began  what  we  conceive  their  raid 

[149] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

upon  humanity,  we  are  wont  to  regard  it  as  evi 
dence  of  incredible  stupidity,  whereas  it  was,  in 
point  of  fact,  rather  a  miscalculation  of  forces. 
That  was  the  error  of  the  secession  leaders.  They 
refused  to  count  the  cost.  Yancey  firmly  believed 
that  England  would  be  forced  to  intervene.  The 
mills  of  Lancashire  he  thought  could  not  get  on 
without  Southern  cotton.  He  was  sent  abroad. 
He  found  Europe  solid  against  slavery  and  there 
fore  set  against  the  Confederacy.  He  came  home 
with  what  is  called  a  broken  heart — the  dreams  of 
a  lifetime  shattered — and,  in  a  kind  of  dazed  stupor, 
laid  himself  down  to  die.  With  Richmond  in 
flames  and  the  exultant  shouts  of  the  detested  yet 
victorious  Yankees  in  his  ears,  he  did  die. 

Wigfall  survived  but  a  few  years.  He  was  less 
a  dreamer  than  Yancey.  A  man  big  of  brain  and 
warm  of  heart  he  had  gone  from  the  ironclad  pro 
vincialism  of  South  Carolina  to  the  windswept 
vagaries  of  Texas.  He  believed  wholly  the  Yancey 
confession  of  faith;  that  secession  was  a  constitu 
tional  right;  that  African  slavery  was  ordained  of 
God ;  that  the  South  was  paramount,  the  North  in 
ferior.  Yet  in  worldly  knowledge  he  had  learned 
more  than  Yancey — was  an  abler  man  than  Jeffer- 
[150] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

son  Davis — and  but  for  his  affections  and  generous 
habits  he  would  have  made  a  larger  figure  in  the 
war,  having  led  the  South's  exit  from  the  Senate. 

VI 

I  do  not  think  that  either  Hammond  or  Chest 
nut,  the  Senators  from  South  Carolina,  both  men 
of  parts,  had  at  bottom  much  belief  in  the  practica 
bility  of  the  Confederate  movement.  Neither  had 
the  Senators  from  Arkansas  and  Alabama,  nor 
Brown,  of  Mississippi,  the  colleague  of  Jefferson 
Davis.  Mason,  of  Virginia,  a  dogged  old  donkey, 
and  Iverson,  of  Georgia,  another,  were  the  kind  of 
men  whom  Wigf  all  dominated. 

One  of  the  least  confident  of  those  who  looked  on 
and  afterward  fell  in  line  was  the  Vice  President, 
John  C.  Breckenridge,  of  Kentucky.  He  was  the 
Beau  Sabreur  among  statesmen  as  Albert  Sidney 
Johnston,  among  soldiers.  Never  man  handsomer 
in  person  or  more  winning  in  manners.  Sprung 
from  a  race  of  political  aristocrats,  he  was  born  to 
early  and  shining  success  in  public  life.  Of  mode 
rate  opinions,  winning  and  prudent,  wherever  he 
appeared  he  carried  his  audience  with  him.  He  had 
been  elected  on  the  ticket  with  Buchanan  to  the 

[151] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

second  office  under  the  Government,  when  he  was 
but  five  and  thirty  years  of  age.  There  was  noth 
ing  for  him  to  gain  from  a  division  of  the  Union; 
the  Presidency,  perhaps,  if  the  Union  continued  un 
divided.  But  he  could  not  resist  the  onrush  of  dis- 
unionism,  went  with  the  South,  which  he  served 
first  in  the  field  and  later  as  Confederate  Secretary 
of  War,  and  after  a  few  years  of  self-imposed  exile 
in  Europe  returned  to  Kentucky  to  die  at  four  and 
fifty,  a  defeated  and  disappointed  old  man. 

The  adjoining  state  of  Tennessee  was  repre 
sented  in  the  Senate  by  one  of  the  most  problematic 
characters  in  American  history.  With  my  father, 
who  remained  his  friend  through  life,  he  had  entered 
the  state  legislature  in  1835,  and  having  served  ten 
years  in  the  lower  House  of  Congress,  and  four 
years  as  governor  of  Tennessee  he  came  back  in 
1857  to  the  National  Capital,  a  member  of  the 
Upper  House.  He  was  Andrew  Johnson. 

I  knew  him  from  my  childhood.  Thrice  that  I 
can  recall  I  saw  him  weep;  never  did  I  see  him 
laugh.  Life  had  been  very  serious,  albeit  very  suc 
cessful,  to  him.  Of  unknown  parentage,  the  wife 
he  had  married  before  he  was  one  and  twenty  had 

taught  him  to  read.    ,Yet  at  six  and  twenty  he  was 
[152] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

in  the  Tennessee  General  Assembly  and  at  four 
and  thirty  in  Congress. 

There  was  from  first  to  last  not  a  little  about  him 
to  baffle  conjecture.  I  should  call  him  a  cross  be 
tween  Jack  Cade  and  Aaron  Burr.  His  sympathies 
were  easily  stirred  by  rags  in  distress.  But  he  was 
uncompromising  in  his  detestation  of  the  rich.  It 
was  said  that  he  hated  "a  biled  shirt."  He  would 
have  nothing  to  do  "with  people  who  wore  broad 
cloth,"  though  he  carefully  dressed  himself.  When, 
as  governor  of  Tennessee,  he  came  to  Nashville  he 
refused  many  invitations  to  take  his  first  New 
Year's  dinner  with  a  party  of  toughs  at  the  house 
of  a  river  roustabout. 

There  was  nothing  of  the  tough  about  him,  how 
ever.  His  language  was  careful  and  exact.  I 
never  heard  him  utter  an  oath  or  tell  a  risque  story. 
He  passed  quite  fifteen  years  in  Washington,  a 
total  abstainer  from  the  use  of  intoxicants.  He 
fell  into  the  occasional-drink  habit  during  the  dark 
days  of  the  War.  But  after  some  costly  experience 
he  dropped  it  and  continued  a  total  abstainer  to 
the  end  of  his  days. 

He  had,  indeed,  admirable  self-control.  I  do 
not  believe  a  more  conscientious  man  ever  lived. 

[153] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

His  judgments  were  sometimes  peculiar,  but  they 
were  upright  and  sincere,  having  reasons,  which  he 
could  give  with  power  and  effect,  behind  them.  Yet 
was  he  a  born  politician,  crafty  to  a  degree,  and  al 
ways  successful,  relying  upon  a  popular  following 
which  never  failed  him. 

In  1860  he  supported  the  quasi-secession  Breck- 
enridge  and  Lane  Presidential  ticket,  but  in  1861 
he  stood  true  to  the  Union,  retaining  his  seat  in  the 
Senate  until  he  was  appointed  military  governor  of 
Tennessee.  Nominated  for  Vice  President  on  the 
ticket  with  Lincoln,  in  1864,  he  was  elected,  and 
upon  the  assassination  of  Lincoln  succeeded  to  the 
Presidency.  Having  served  out  his  term  as  Presi 
dent  he  returned  to  Tennessee  to  engage  in  the  hot 
test  kind  of  politics,  and  though  at  the  outset  de 
feated  finally  regained  his  seat  in  the  Senate  of  the 
United  States. 

He  hated  Grant  with  a  holy  hate.  His  first  act 
on  reentering  the  Senate  was  to  deliver  an  im 
placably  bitter  speech  against  the  President.  It 
was  his  last  public  appearance.  He  went  thence 
to  his  home  in  East  Tennessee,  gratified  and  happy, 
to  die  in  a  few  weeks. 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

VII 

There  used  to  be  a  story  about  Raleigh,  in  North 
Carolina,  where  Andrew  Johnson  was  born,  which 
whispered  that  he  was  a  natural  son  of  William 
Ruffin,  an  eminent  jurist  in  the  earlier  years  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  It  was  analogous  to  the  story 
that  Lincoln  was  the  natural  son  of  various  paterni 
ties  from  time  to  time  assigned  to  him.  I  had  my 
share  in  running  that  calumny  to  cover.  It  was  a 
lie  out  of  whole  cloth  with  nothing  whatever  to  sup 
port  or  excuse  it.  I  reached  the  bottom  of  it  to  dis 
cover  proof  of  its  baselessness  abundant  and  con 
clusive.  In  Johnson's  case  I  take  it  that  the  story 
had  nothing  other  to  rest  on  than  the  obscurity  of 
his  birth  and  the  quality  of  his  talents.  Late  in  life 
Johnson  went  to  Raleigh  and  caused  to  be  erected 
a  modest  tablet  over  the  spot  pointed  out  as  the 
grave  of  his  progenitor,  saying,  I  was  told  by  per 
sons  claiming  to  have  been  present,  "I  place  this 
stone  over  the  last  earthly  abode  of  my  alleged 
father." 

Johnson,  in  the  saying  of  the  countryside,  "out- 
married  himself."  His  wife  was  a  plain  woman, 
but  came  of  good  family.  One  day,  when  a  child,  so 

[155] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

the  legend  ran,  she  saw  passing  through  the  Green 
ville  street  in  which  her  people  lived,  a  woman,  a  boy 
and  a  cow,  the  boy  carrying  a  pack  over  his  shoul 
der.  They  were  obviously  weary  and  hungry.  Ex 
treme  poverty  could  present  no  sadder  picture. 
"Mother,"  cried  the  girl,  "there  goes  the  man  I  am 
going  to  marry."  She  was  thought  to  be  in  jest. 
But  a  few  years  later  she  made  her  banter  good 
and  lived  to  See  her!  husband  President  of  the 
United  States  and  with  him  to  occupy  the  White 
House  at  Washington. 

Much  has  been  written  of  the  humble  birth  and 
iron  fortune  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  He  had  no  such 
obstacles  to  overcome  as  either  Andrew  Jackson  or 
Andrew  Johnson.  Jackson,  a  prisoner  of  war,  was 
liberated,  a  lad  of  sixteen,  from  the  British  pen  at 
Charleston,  without  a  relative,  a  friend  or  a  dollar 
in  the  world,  having  to  make  his  way  upward 
through  the  most  aristocratic  community  of  the 
country  and  the  time.  Johnson,  equally  friendless 
and  penniless,  started  as  a  poor  tailor  in  a  rustic 
village.  Lincoln  must  therefore,  take  third  place 
among  our  self-made  Presidents.  The  Hanks 
family  were  not  paupers.  He  had  a  wise  and  help 
ful  stepmother.  He  was  scarcely  worse  off  than 
[156] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

most  young  fellows  of  his  neighborhood,  first  in 
Indiana  and  then  in  Illinois.  On  this  side  justice 
has  never  been  rendered  to  Jackson  and  Johnson. 
In  the  case  of  Jackson  the  circumstance  was  for 
gotten,  while  Johnson  too  often  dwelt  upon  it  and 
made  capital  out  of  it. 

Under  date  of  the  23rd  of  May,  1919,  the  Hon. 
Josephus  Daniels,  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  writes 
me  the  following  letter,  which  I  violate  no  confi 
dence  in  reproducing  in  this  connection: 

MY  DEAR  MARSE  HENRY: —    t 

I  can't  tell  you  how  much  delight  and  pleasure 
your  reminiscences  in  the  Saturday  Evening  Post 
have  given  me,  as  well  as  the  many  others  who  have 
followed  them,  and  I  suppose  you  will  put  them  in 
a  volume  when  they  are  finished,  so  that  we  may 
have  the  pleasure  of  reading  them  in  connected 
order. 

As  you  know,  I  live  in  Raleigh  and  I  was  very 
much  interested  in  your  article  in  the  issue  of  April 
5,  1919,  with  reference  to  Andrew  Johnson,  in 
which  you  quote  a  story  that  "used  to  be  current 
in  Raleigh,  that  he  was  the  son  of  William  Ruffin, 
an  eminent  jurist  of  the  ninetenth  century."  I 

[157] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

had  never  heard  this  story,  but  the  story  that  was 
gossiped  there  was  that  he  was  the  son  of  a  certain 
Senator  Haywood.  I  ran  that  story  down  and 
found  that  it  had  no  foundation  whatever,  because 
if  he  had  been  the  son  of  the  Senator  reputed  to  be 
his  father,  the  Senator  was  of  the  age  of  twelve 
years  when  Andrew  Johnson  was  born. 

My  own  information  is,  for  I  have  made  some 
investigation  of  it,  that  the  story  about  Andrew 
Johnson's  having  a  father  other  than  the  husband 
of  his  mother,  is  as  wanting  in  foundation  as  the 
story  about  Abraham  Lincoln.  You  did  a  great 
service  in  running  that  down  and  exposing  it,  and 
I  trust  before  you  finish  your  book  that  you  will 
make  further  investigation  and  be  able  to  do  a  like 
service  in  repudiating  the  unjust,  idle  gossip  with 
reference  to  Andrew  Johnson.  In  your  article  you 
say  that  persons  who  claim  to  have  been  present 
when  Johnson  came  to  Raleigh  and  erected  a  monu 
ment  over  the  grave  of  his  father,  declare  that 
Johnson  said  he  placed  this  stone  over  the  last 
earthly  abode  of  "my  alleged  father."  That  is  one 
phase  of  the  gossip,  and  the  other  is  that  he  said 
"my  reputed  father,"  both  equally  false. 

The  late  Mr.  Pulaski  Cowper,  who  was  private 
[158] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

secretary  to  Governor  Bragg,  of  our  State,  just 
prior  to  the  war,  and  who  was  afterwards  president 
of  our  leading  life  insurance  company,  a  gentleman 
of  high  character,  and  of  the  best  memory,  was 
present  at  the  time  that  Johnson  made  the  address 
from  which  you  quote  the  rumor.  Mr.  Cowper 
wrote  an  article  for  The  News  and  Observer,  giv 
ing  the  story  and  relating  that  Johnson  said  that 
"he  was  glad  to  come  to  Raleigh  to  erect  a  tablet 
to  his  father."  The  truth  is  that  while  his  father 
was  a  man  of  little  or  no  education,  he  held  the 
position  of  janitor  at  the  State  Capitol,  and  he 
was  not  wanting  in  qualities  which  made  him 
superior  to  his  humble  position.  If  he  had  been 
living  in  this  day  he  would  have  been  given  a  life- 
saving  medal,  for  upon  the  occasion  of  a  picnic 
near  Raleigh  when  the  cry  came  that  children  were 
drowning  he  was  the  first  to  leap  in  and  endanger 
his  life  to  save  them. 

Andrew  Johnson's  mother  was  related  to  the 
Chappell  family,  of  which  there  are  a  number  of 
citizens  of  standing  and  character  near  Raleigh, 
several  of  them  having  been  ministers  of  the 
Gospel,  and  one  at  least  having  gained  distinction 
as  a  missionary  in  China. 

[159] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

I  am  writing  you  because  I  know  that  your  story 
will  be  read  and  accepted  and  I  thought  you  would 
be  glad  to  have  this  story,  based  upon  a  study  and 
investigation  and  personal  knowledge  of  Mr. 
Cowper,  whose  character  and  competency  are  well 
known  in  North  Carolina. 


[160] 


CHAPTER  THE  SEVENTH 

AN    OLD    NEWSPAPER    ROOKERY REACTIONARY    SEC 
TIONALISM    IN    CINCINNATI   AND   LOUISVILLE 

THE  COURIER-JOURNAL 


MY  dream  of  wealth  through  my  commission 
on  the  Confederate  cotton  I  was  to  sell  to 
English  buyers  was  quickly  shattered.  The  cotton 
was  burned  and  I  found  myself  in  the  early  spring 
of  1865  in  the  little  village  of  Glendale,  a  suburb  of 
Cincinnati,  where  the  future  Justice  Stanley  Mat 
thews  had  his  home.  His  wife  was  a  younger  sister 
of  my  mother.  My  grandmother  was  still  alive  and 
lived  with  her  daughter  and  son-in-law. 

I  was  received  with  open  arms.  A  few  days  later 
the  dear  old  lady  said  to  me:  "I  suppose,  my  son, 
you  are  rather  a  picked  bird  after  your  adventures 
in  the  South.  You  certainly  need  better  clothing. 
I  have  some  money  in  bank  and  it  is  freely  yours.*' 

I  knew  that  my  Uncle  Stanley  had  put  her  up 

[161] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

to  this,  and  out  of  sheer  curiosity  I  asked  her  how 
much  she  could  let  me  have.  She  named  what 
seemed  to  me  a  stupendous  sum.  I  thanked  her, 
told  her  I  had  quite  a  sufficiency  for  the  time  being, 
slipped  into  town  and  pawned  my  watch;  that  is, 
as  I  made  light  of  it  afterward  in  order  to  escape 
the  humiliation  of  borrowing  from  an  uncle  whose 
politics  I  did  not  approve,  I  went  with  my  collateral 
to  an  uncle  who  had  no  politics  at  all  and  got  fifty 
dollars  on  it!  Before  the  money  was  gone  I  had 
found,  through  Judge  Matthews,  congenial  work. 

There  was  in  Cincinnati  but  one  afternoon  news 
paper — the  Evening  Times — owned  by  Calvin  W. 
Starbuck.  He  had  been  a  practical  printer  but  was 
grown  very  rich.  He  received  me  kindly,  said  the 
editorial  force  was  quite  full — must  always  be,  on 
a  daily  newspaper — "but,"  he  added,  "my  brother, 
Alexander  Starbuck,  who  has  been  running  the 
amusements,  wants  to  go  a-fishing  in  Canada — to 
be  gone  a  month — and,  if  you  wish,  you  can  during 
his  absence  sub  for  him." 

It  was  just  to  my  hand  and  liking.  Before  Alex 
ander  Starbuck  returned  the  leading  editor  of  the 
paper  fell  from  a  ferryboat  crossing  the  Ohio 
River  and  was  drowned.  The  next  day  General 
[162] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Starbuck  sent  for  me  and  offered  me  the  vacant 
place. 

"Why,  general,"  I  said,  "I  am  an  outlawed  man: 
I  do  not  agree  with  your  politics.  I  do  not  see  how 
I  can  undertake  a  place  so  conspicuous  and  re 
sponsible." 

He  replied:  "I  propose  to  engage  you  as  an 
editorial  manager.  It  is  as  if  building  a  house  you 
should  be  head  carpenter,  I  the  architect.  The  dif 
ference  in  salary  will  be  seventy-five  dollars  a  week 
against  fifteen  dollars  a  week." 

I  took  the  place. 

II 

The  office  of  the  Evening  Times  was  a  queer  old 
curiosity  shop.  I  set  to  and  turned  it  inside  out. 
I  had  very  pronounced  journalistic  notions  of  my 
own  and  applied  them  in  every  department  of  the 
sleepy  old  money-maker.  One  afternoon  a  week 
later  I  put  forth  a  paper  whose  oldest  reader  could 
not  have  recognized  it.  The  next  morning's  Cin 
cinnati  Commercial  contained  a  flock  of  paragraphs 
to  which  the  Chattanooga-Cincinnati-Rebel  Eve 
ning  Times  furnished  the  keynote. 

They  made  funny  reading,  but  they  threw  a 
dangerous  flare  upon  my  "past"  and  put  me  at  a 

[163] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

serious  disadvantage.  It  happened  that  when 
Artemus  Ward  had  been  in  town  a  fortnight  before 
he  gave  me  a  dinner  and  had  some  of  his  friends  to 
meet  me.  Among  these  was  a  young  fellow  of  the 
name  of  Halstead,  who,  I  was  told,  was  the  coming 
man  on  the  Commercial. 

Round  to  the  Commercial  office  I  sped,  and  be 
ing  conducted  to  this  person,  who  received  me  very 
blandly,  I  said:  "Mr.  Halstead,  I  am  a  journeyman 
day  laborer  in  your  city — the  merest  bird  of  pas 
sage,  with  my  watch  at  the  pawnbroker's.  As  soon 
as  I  am  able  to  get  out  of  town  I  mean  to  go — and 
I  came  to  ask  if  you  can  think  the  personal  allusions 
to  me  in  to-day's  paper,  which  may  lose  me  my  job 
but  can  nowise  hurt  the  Times,  are  quite  fair — even 
— since  I  am  without  defense — quite  manly." 

He  looked  at  me  with  that  quizzical,  serio-comic 
stare  which  so  became  him,  and  with  great  heartiness 
replied:  "No — they  were  damned  mean — though 
I  did  not  realize  how  mean.  The  mark  was  so 
obvious  and  tempting  I  could  not  resist,  but — there 
shall  be  no  more  of  them.  Come,  let  us  go  and 
have  a  drink." 

That  was  the  beginning  of  a  friendship  which 
brought  happiness  to  both  of  us  and  lasted  nearly 
[164] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

half  a  century,  to  the  hour  of  his  death,  when,  going 
from  Louisville  to  Cincinnati,  I  helped  to  lay  him 
away  in  Spring  Grove  Cemetery. 

I  had  no  thought  of  remaining  in  Cincinnati. 
My  objective  was  Nashville,  where  the  young 
woman  who  was  to  become  my  wife,  and  whom  I 
had  not  seen  for  nearly  two  years,  was  living  with 
her  family.  During  the  summer  Mr.  Francisco, 
the  business  manager  of  the  Evening  Times,  had 
a  scheme  to  buy  the  Toledo  Commercial,  in  con 
junction  with  Mr.  Comly,  of  Columbus,  and  to  en 
gage  me  as  editor  conjointly  with  Mr.  Harrison 
Gray  Otis  as  publisher.  It  looked  very  good. 
Toledo  threatened  Cleveland  and  Detroit  as  a  lake 
port.  But  nothing  could  divert  me.  As  soon  as 
Parson  Brownlow,  who  was  governor  of  Tennessee 
and  making  things  lively  for  the  returning  rebels, 
would  allow,  I  was  going  to  Nashville. 

About  the  time  the  way  was  cleared  my  two 
pals,  or  bunkies,  of  the  Confederacy,  Albert  Rob 
erts  and  George  Purvis,  friends  from  boyhood,  put 
in  an  appearance.  They  were  on  their  way  to  the 
capital  of  Tennessee.  The  father  of  Albert  Rob 
erts  was  chief  owner  of  the  Republican  Banner,  an 
old  and  highly  respectable  newspaper,  which  had 

[165} 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

for  nearly  four  years  lain  in  a  state  of  suspension. 
Their  plan  now  was  to  revive  its  publication,  Purvis 
to  be  busjness  manager,  and  Albert  and  I  to  be 
editors.  We  had  no  cash.  Nobody  on  our  side  of 
the  line  had  any  cash.  But  John  Roberts  owned  a 
farm  he  could  mortgage  for  money  enough  to  start 
us.  What  had  I  to  say? 

Less  than  a  week  later  saw  us  back  at  home  win 
nowing  the  town  for  subscribers  and  advertising. 
We  divided  it  into  districts,  each  taking  a  specified 
territory.  The  way  we  boys  hustled  was  a  sight 
to  see.  But  the  way  the  community  warmed  to  us 
was  another.  When  the  familiar  headline,  The 
Republican  Banner,  made  its  apearance  there  was 
a  popular  hallelujah,  albeit  there  were  five  other 
dailies  ahead  of  us.  A  year  later  there  was  only 
one,  and  it  was  nowise  a  competitor. 

Albert  Roberts  had  left  his  girl,  Edith  Scott, 
the  niece  of  Huxley,  whom  I  have  before  mentioned, 
in  Montgomery,  Alabama.  Purvis'  girl,  Sophie 
Searcy,  was  in  Selma.  Their  hope  was  to  have 
enough  money  by  Christmas  each  to  pay  a  visit  to 
those  distant  places.  My  girl  was  on  the  spot,  and 
we  had  resolved,  money  or  no  money,  to  be  married 
without  delay.  Before  New  Year's  the  three  of  us 
[166] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

were  wedded  and  comfortably  settled,  with  funds 
galore,  for  the  paper  had  thrived  consumingly.  It 
had  thrived  so  consumingly  that  after  a  little  I  was 
able  to  achieve  the  wish  of  my  heart  and  to  go  to 
London,  taking  my  wife  and  my  "great  American 
novel"  with  me..  I  have  related  elsewhere  what 
came  of  this  and  what  happened  to  me. 

ni 

That  bread  cast  upon  the  waters — "  'dough*  put 
out  at  usance,"  as  Joseph  Jefferson  used  to  phrase 
it — shall  return  after  many  days  has  been  I  dare 
say  discovered  by  most  persons  who  have  perpe 
trated  acts  of  kindness,  conscious  or  unconscious. 
There  was  a  poor,  broken-down  English  actor  with 
a  passion  for  Chaucer,  whom  I  was  wont  to  en 
counter  in  the  Library  of  Congress.  His  voice  was 
quite  gone.  Now  and  again  I  had  him  join  me  in 
a  square  meal.  Once  in  a  while  I  paid  his  room 
rent.  I  was  loath  to  leave  him  when  the  break  came 
in  1861,  though  he  declared  he  had  "expectations," 
and  made  sure  he  would  not  starve. 

I  was  passing  through  Regent  Street  in  London, 
when  a  smart  brougham  drove  up  to  the  curb  and 
a  wheezy  voice  called  after  me.  It  was  my  old 

[167] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

friend,  Newton.  His  "expectations"  had  not  failed 
him,  he  had  come  into  a  property  and  was  living 
in  affluence. 

He  knew  London  as  only  a  Bohemian  native 
and  to  the  manner  born  could  know  it.  His  sense 
of  bygone  obligation  knew  no  bounds.  Between 
him  and  John  Mahoney  and  Artemus  Ward  I  was 
made  at  home  in  what  might  be  called  the  mysteries 
and  eccentricities  of  differing  phases  of  life  in  the 
British  metropolis  not  commonly  accessible  to  the 
foreign  casual.  In  many  after  visits  this  familiar 
knowledge  has  served  me  well.  But  Newton  did 
not  live  to  know  of  some  good  fortune  that  came 
to  me  and  to  feel  my  gratitude  to  him,  as  dear  old 
John  Mahoney  did.  When  I  was  next  in  London 
he  was  gone. 

It  was  not,  however,  the  actor,  Newton,  whom 
I  had  in  mind  in  offering  a  bread-upon-the-water 
moral,  but  a  certain  John  Hatcher,  the  memory  of 
whom  in  my  case  illustrates  it  much  better.  He 
was  a  wit  and  a  poet.  He  had  been  State  Librarian 
of  Tennessee.  Nothing  could  keep  him  out  of  the 
service,  though  he  was  a  sad  cripple  and  wholly  un 
equal  to  its  requirements.  He  fell  ill.  I  had  the 
opportunity  to  care  for  him.  When  the  war  was 
[168] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

over  his  old  friend,  George  D.  Prentice,  called  him 
to  Louisville  to  take  an  editorial  place  on  the 
Journal. 

About  the  same  time  Mr.  Walter  Haldeman  re 
turned  from  the  South  and  resumed  the  suspended 
publication  of  the  Louisville  Courier.  He  was  in 
the  prime  of  life,  a  man  of  surpassing  energy,  enter 
prise  and  industry,  and  had  with  him  the  popular 
sympathy.  Mr.  Prentice  was  nearly  three  score 
and  ten.  The  stream  had  passed  him  by.  The 
Journal  was  not  only  beginning  to  feel  the  strain 
but  was  losing  ground.  In  this  emergency  Hatcher 
came  to  the  rescue.  I  was  just  back  from  London 
and  was  doing  noticeable  work  on  the  Nashville 
Banner. 

"Here  is  your  man,"  said  Hatcher  to  Mr.  Pren 
tice  and  Mr.  Henderson,  the  owners  of  the  Journal ; 
and  I  was  invited  to  come  to  Louisville. 

After  I  had  looked  over  the  field  and  inspected 
the  Journal's  books  I  was  satisfied  that  a  union 
with  the  Courier  was  the  wisest  solution  of  the 
newspaper  situation,  and  told  them  so.  Meanwhile 
Mr.  Haldeman,  whom  I  had  known  in  the  Confed 
eracy,  sent  for  me.  He  offered  me  the  same  terms 
for  part  ownership  and  sole  editorship  of  the 

[169] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Courier,  which  the  Journal  people  had  offered  me. 
This  I  could  not  accept,  but  proposed  as  an  alterna 
tive  the  consolidation  of  the  two  on  an  equal  basis. 
He  was  willing  enough  for  the  consolidation,  but 
not  on  equal  terms.  There  was  nothing  for  it  but 
a  fight.  I  took  the  Journal  and  began  to  hammer 
the  Courier. 

A  dead  summer  was  before  us,  but  Mr.  Hender 
son  had  plenty  of  money  and  was  willing  to  spend 
it.  During  the  contest  not  an  unkind  word  Was 
printed  on  either  side.  After  stripping  the  Journal 
to  its  heels  it  had  very  little  to  go  on  or  to  show  for 
Trhat  had  once  been  a  prosperous  business.  But 
circulation  flowed  in.  From  eighten  hundred  daily 
it  quickly  mounted  to  ten  thousand;  from  fifteen 
hundred  weekly  to  fifty  thousand.  The  middle  of 
October  it  looked  as  if  we  had  a  straight  road  be 
fore  us. 

But  I  knew  better.  I  had  discovered  that  the 
field,  no  matter  how  worked,  was  not  big  enough  to 
support  two  rival  dailies.  There  was  toward  the 
last  of  October  on  the  edge  of  town  a  real-estate 
sale  which  Mr.  Haldeman  and  I  attended.  Here 
was  my  chance  for  a  play.  I  must  have  bid  up  to  a 
hundred  thousand  dollars  and  did  actually  buy 
(170] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

nearly  ten  thousand  dollars  of  the  lots  put  up  at 
auction,  relying  upon  some  money  presently  com 
ing  to  my  wife. 

I  could  see  that  it  made  an  impression  on  Mr. 
Haldeman.  Returning  in  the  carriage  which  had 
brought  us  out  I  said:  "Mr.  Haldeman,  I  am  going 
to  ruin  you.  But  I  am  going  to  run  up  a  money 
obligation  to  I  sham  Henderson  I  shall  never  be 
able  to  discharge.  You  need  an  editor.  I  need  a 
publisher.  Let  us  put  these  two  newspapers  to 
gether,  buy  the  Democrat,  and,  instead  of  cutting 
one  another's  throats,  go  after  Cincinnati  and  St. 
Louis.  You  will  recall  that  I  proposed  this  to  you 
in  the  beginning.  What  is  the  matter  with  it 
now?" 

Nothing  was  the  matter  with  it.  He  agreed  at 
once.  The  details  were  soon  adjusted.  Ten  days 
later  there  appeared  upon  the  doorsteps  of  the  city 
in  place  of  the  three  familiar  visitors,  a  double- 
headed  stranger,  calling  itself  the  Courier- Journal, 
Our  exclusive  possession  of  the  field  thus  acquired 
lasted  two  years.  At  the  end  of  these  we  found  that 
at  least  the  appearance  of  competition  was  indis 
pensable  and  willingly  acepted  an  offer  from  a  pro 
posed  Republican  organ  for  a  division  of  the  Press 

[171] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

dispatches  which  we  controlled.  Then  and  there 
the  real  prosperity  of  the  Courier-Journal  began, 
the  paper  having  made  no  money  out  of  its 

monopoly. 

IV 

Reconstruction,  as  it  was  called — ruin  were  a 
fitter  name  for  it — had  just  begun.  The  South 
was  imprisoned,  awaiting  the  executioner.  The 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  hung  in  the 
balance.  The  Federal  Union  faced  the  threat  of 
sectional  despotism.  The  spirit  of  the  time  was 
martial  law.  The  gospel  of  proscription  ruled  in 
Congress.  Radicalism,  vitalized  by  the  murder  of 
Abraham  Lincoln  and  inflamed  by  the  inadequate 
effort  of  Andrew  Johnson  to  carry  out  the  policies 
of  Lincoln,  was  in  the  saddle  riding  furiously  to 
ward  a  carpetbag  Poland  and  a  negroized  Ireland. 

The  Democratic  Party,  which,  had  it  been 
stronger,  might  have  interposed,  lay  helpless.  It, 
too,  was  crushed  to  earth.  Even  the  Border  States, 
which  had  not  been  embraced  by  the  military 
agencies  and  federalized  machinery  erected  over 
the  Gulf  States,  were  seriously  menaced.  Never 
did  newspaper  enterprise  set  out  under  gloomier 
auspices. 
[172] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

There  was  a  party  of  reaction  in  Kentucky, 
claiming  to  be  Democratic,  playing  to  the  lead  of 
the  party  of  repression  at  the  North.  It  refused 
to  admit  that  the  head  of  the  South  was  in  the 
lion's  mouth  and  that  the  first  essential  was  to  get 
it  out.  The  Courier-Journal  proposed  to  stroke 
the  mane,  not  twist  the  tail  of  the  lion.  Thus  it 
stood  between  two  fires.  There  arose  a  not  un 
natural  distrust  of  the  journalistic  monopoly 
created  by  the  consolidation  of  the  three  former 
dailies  into  a  single  newspaper,  carrying  an  un 
familiar  hyphenated  headline.  Touching  its  policy 
of  sectional  conciliation  it  picked  its  way  perilously 
through  the  cross  currents  of  public  opinion. 
There  was  scarcely  a  sinister  purpose  that  was  not 
alleged  against  it  by  its  enemies;  scarcely  a  hostile 
device  that  was  not  undertaken  to  put  it  down  and 
drive  it  out. 

Its  constituency  represented  an  unknown  quan 
tity.  In  any  event  it  had  to  be  created.  Mean 
while,  it  must  rely  upon  its  own  resources,  sustained 
by  the  courage  of  the  venture,  by  the  integrity  of 
its  convictions  and  aims,  and  by  faith  in  the  future 
of  the  city,  the  state  and  the  country. 

Still,  to  be  precise,  it  was  the  morning  of  Sun- 

[173] 


^ 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

day,  November  8, 1868.  The  night  before  the  good 
people  of  Louisville  had  gone  to  bed  expecting 
nothing  unusual  to  happen.  They  awoke  to  en 
counter  an  uninvited  guest  arrived  a  little  before 
the  dawn.  No  hint  of  its  coming  had  got  abroad; 
and  thus  the  surprise  was  the  greater.  Truth  to 
say,  it  was  not  a  pleased  surprise,  because,  as  it 
flared  before  the  eye  of  the  startled  citizen  in  big 
Gothic  letters,  The  Courier-Journal,  there  issued 
thence  an  aggressive  self-confidence  which  affronted 
the  amour  propre  of  the  sleepy  villagers.  They 
were  used  to  a  very  different  style  of  newspaper 
approach. 

Nor  was  the  absence  of  a  timorous  demeanor  its 
only  offense.  The  Courier  had  its  partisans,  the 
Journal  and  the  Democrat  had  their  friends.  The 
trio  stood  as  ancient  landmarks,  as  recognized  and 
familiar  institutions.  Here  was  a  double-headed 
monster  which,  without  saying  "by  your  leave"  or 
"blast  your  eyes"  or  any  other  politeness,  had  taken 
possession  of  each  man's  doorstep,  looking  very  like 
it  had  brought  its  knitting  and  was  come  to  stay. 

The  Journal  established  by  Mr.  Prentice,  the 
Courier  by  Mr.  Haldeman  and  the  Democrat  by 
Mr.  Harney,  had  been  according  to  the  standards 
[174] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

of  those  days  successful  newspapers.  But  the  War 
of  Sections  had  made  many  changes.  At  its  close 
new  conditions  appeared  on  every  side.  A  revolu 
tion  had  come  into  the  business  and  the  spirit  of 
American  journalism. 

In  Louisville  three  daily  newspapers  had  for  a 
generation  struggled  for  the  right  of  way.  Yet 
Louisville  was  a  city  of  the  tenth  or  twelfth  class, 
having  hardly  enough  patronage  to  sustain  one 
daily  newspaper  of  the  first  or  second  class.  The 
idea  of  consolidating  the  three  thus  contending  to 
divide  a  patronage  so  insufficient,  naturally  sug 
gested  itself  during  the  years  immediately  succeed 
ing  the  war.  But  it  did  not  take  definite  shape 
until  1868. 

Mr.  Haldeman  had  returned  from  a  somewhat 
picturesque  and  not  altogether  profitable  pursuit 
of  his  "rights  in  the  territories"  and  had  resumed 
the  suspended  publication  of  the  Courier  with  en 
couraging  prospects.  I  had  succeeded  Mr.  Pren 
tice  in  the  editorship  and  part  ownership  of  the 
Journal.  Both  Mr.  Haldeman  and  I  were  news 
paper  men  to  the  manner  born  and  bred;  old  and 
good  friends;  and  after  our  rivalry  of  six  months 
maintained  with  activity  on  both  sides,  but  without 

[175] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

the  publication  of  an  unkind  word  on  either,  a 
union  of  forces  seemed  exigent.  To  practical  men 
the  need  of  this  was  not  a  debatable  question.  All 
that  was  required  was  an  adjustment  of  the  details. 
Beginning  with  the  simple  project  of  joining  the 
Courier  and  the  Journal,  it  ended  by  the  purchase 
of  the  Democrat,  which  it  did  not  seem  safe  to 

leave  outside. 

v 

The  political  conditions  in  Kentucky  were  anoma 
lous.  The  Republican  Party  had  not  yet  definitely 
taken  root.  Many  of  the  rich  old  Whigs,  who  had 
held  to  the  Government — to  save  their  slaves — 
resenting  Lincoln's  Emancipation  Proclamation, 
had  turned  Democrats.  Most  of  the  before-the- 
war  Democrats  had  gone  with  the  Confederacy. 
The  party  in  power  called  itself  Democratic,  but 
was  in  fact  a  body  of  reactionary  nondescripts 
claiming  to  be  Unionists  and  clinging,  or  pretend 
ing  to  cling,  to  the  hard-and-fast  prejudices  of 
other  days. 

The  situation  may  be  the  better  understood  when 

I  add  that  "negro  testimony" — the  introduction  to 

the  courts  of  law  of  the  newly  made  freedmen  as 

witnesses — barred  by  the  state  constitution,  was  the 

[176] 


§3 

p  3 

*  w 

ss  a 
w  > 

S5 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

burning  issue.  A  murder  committed  in  the  pres 
ence  of  a  thousand  negroes  could  not  be  lawfully 
proved  in  court.  Everything  from  a  toothbrush  to 
a  cake  of  soap  might  be  cited  before  a  jury,  but 
not  a  human  being  if  his  skin  happened  to  be  black. 

To  my  mind  this  was  monstrous.  From  my 
cradle  I  had  detested  slavery.  The  North  will 
never  know  how  many  people  at  the  South  did  so. 
I  could  not  go  with  the  Republican  Party,  how 
ever,  because  after  the  death  of  Abraham  Lincoln 
it  had  intrenched  itself  in  the  proscription  of  South 
ern  men.  The  attempt  to  form  a  third  party  had 
shown  no  strength  and  had  broken  down.  There 
was  nothing  for  me,  and  the  Confederates  who  were 
with  me,  but  the  ancient  label  of  a  Democracy  worn 
by  a  riffraff  of  opportunists,  Jeffersonian  prin 
ciples  having  quite  gone  to  seed.  But  I  proposed 
to  lead  and  reform  it,  not  to  follow  and  fall  in  be 
hind  the  selfish  and  short-sighted  time  servers  who 
thought  the  people  had  learned  nothing  and  forgot 
nothing;  and  instant  upon  finding  myself  in  the 
saddle  I  sought  to  ride  down  the  mass  of  ignorance 
which  was  at  least  for  the  time  being  mainly  what 
I  had  to  look  to  for  a  constituency. 

Mr.  Prentice,  who  knew  the  lay  of  the  ground 

[177] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

better  than  I  did,  advised  against  it.  The  personal 
risk  counted  for  something.  Very  early  in  the  ac 
tion  I  made  a  direct  fighting  issue,  which — the  com 
bat  interdicted — gave  me  the  opportunity  to  de 
clare — with  something  of  the  bully  in  the  tone — 
that  I  might  not  be  able  to  hit  a  barn  door  at  ten 
paces,  but  could  shoot  with  any  man  in  Kentucky 
across  a  pocket  handkerchief,  holding  myself  at  all 
times  answerable  and  accessible.  I  had  a  fairly 
good  fighting  record  in  the  army  and  it  was  not 
doubted  that  I  meant  what  I  said. 

But  it  proved  a  bitter,  hard,  uphill  struggle,  for 
a  long  while  against  odds,  before  negro  testimony 
was  carried.  A  generation  of  politicians  were  sent 
to  the  rear.  Finally,  in  1876,  a  Democratic  State 
Convention  put  its  mark  upon  me  as  a  Democrat 
by  appointing  me  a  Delegate  at  large  to  the  Na 
tional  Democratic  Convention  of  that  year  called 
to  meet  at  St.  Louis  to  put  a  Presidential  ticket 
in  the  field. 

The  Courier- Journal  having  come  to  represent 
all  three  of  the  English  dailies  of  the  city  the  public 
began  to  rebel.  It  could  not  see  that  instead  of  three 
newspapers  of  the  third  or  fourth  class  Louisville 
was  given  one  newspaper  of  the  first  class ;  that  in- 
[178] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

stead  of  dividing  the  local  patronage  in  three 
inadequate  portions,  wasted  upon  a  triple  competi 
tion,  this  patronage  was  combined,  enabling  the 
one  newspaper  to  engage  in  a  more  equal  competi 
tion  with  the  newspapers  of  such  rival  and  larger 
cities  as  Cincinnati  and  St.  Louis ;  and  that  one  of 
the  contracting  parties  needing  an  editor,  the  other 
a  publisher,  in  coming  together  the  two  were  able 
to  put  their  trained  faculties  to  the  best  account. 
Nevertheless,  during  thirty-five  years  Mr. 
Haldeman  and  I  labored  side  by  side,  not  the 
least  difference  having  arisen  between  us.  The 
attacks  to  which  we  were  subjected  from  time  to 
lime  drew  us  together  the  closer.  These  attacks 
were  sometimes  irritating  and  sometimes  comical, 
but  they  had  one  characteristic  feature:  Each 
started  out  apparently  under  a  high  state  of  excite 
ment.  Each  seemed  to  have  some  profound  cause 
of  grief,  to  be  animated  by  implacable  hate  and  to 
aim  at  nothing  short  of  annihilation.  Frequently 
the  assailants  would  lie  in  wait  to  see  how  the 
Courier- Journal's  cat  was  going  to  jump,  in  order 
that  they  might  take  the  other  side;  and  invariably, 
even  if  the  Courier-Journal  stood  for  the  reforms 
they  affected  to  stand  for,  they  began  a  system  of 

[179] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

misrepresentation  and  abuse.    In  no  instance  did 
they  attain  any  success. 

Only  once,  during  the  Free  Silver  craze  of  1896, 
and  the  dark  and  tragic  days  that  followed  it  the 
three  or  four  succeeding  years,  the  paper  having 
stood,  as  it  had  stood  during  the  Greenback  craze, 
for  sound  money,  was  the  property  in  danger.  It 
cost  more  of  labor  and  patience  to  save  it  from 
destruction  than  it  had  cost  to  create  it  thirty  years 
before.  Happily  Mr.  Haldeman  lived  to  see  the 
rescue  complete,  the  tide  turned  and  the  future  safe. 

VI 

A  newspaper,  like  a  woman,  must  not  only  be 
honest,  but  must  seem  to  be  honest;  acts  of  levity, 
loose  unbecoming  expressions  or  behavior — though 
never  so  innocent — tending  in  the  one  and  in  the 
other  to  lower  reputation  and  discredit  character. 
During  my  career  I  have  proceeded  under  a  con 
fident  belief  in  this  principle  of  newspaper  ethics 
and  an  unfailing  recognition  of  its  mandates.  I 
truly  believe  that  next  after  business  integrity  in 
newspaper  management  comes  disinterestedness  in 
the  public  service,  and  next  after  disinterestedness 
come  moderation  and  intelligence,  cleanliness  and 
[180] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

good  feeling,  in  dealing  with  affairs  and  its  read 
ers. 

From  that  blessed  Sunday  morning,  November 
8,  1868,  to  this  good  day,  I  have  known  no  other 
life  and  had  no  other  aim.  Those  were  indeed 
parlous  times.  It  was  an  era  of  transition.  Upon 
the  field  of  battle,  after  four  years  of  deadly  but 
unequal  combat,  the  North  had  vanquished  (the 
South.  The  victor  stood  like  a  giant,  with  blood 
aflame,  eyes  dilate  and  hands  uplifted  again  to 
strike.  The  victim  lay  prostrate.  Save  self-respect 
and  manhood  all  was  lost.  Clasping  its  memories 
to  its  bosom  the  South  sank  helpless  amid  the  wreck 
of  its  fortunes,  whilst  the  North,  the  benign  in 
fluence  of  the  great  Lincoln  withdrawn,  proceeded 
to  decide  its  fate.  To  this  ghastly  end  had  come 
slavery  and  secession,  and  all  the  pomp,  pride  and 
circumstance  of  the  Confederacy.  To  this  bitter 
end  had  come  the  soldiership  of  Lee  and  Jackson 
and  Johnston  and  the  myriads  of  brave  men  who 
followed  them. 

The  single  Constitutional  barrier  that  had  stood 
between  the  people  of  the  stricken  section  and 
political  extinction  was  about  to  be  removed  by  the 
exit  of  Andrew  Johnson  from  the  White  House. 

[181] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

In  his  place  a  man  of  blood  and  iron — for  such  was 
the  estimate  at  that  time  placed  upon  Grant — had 
been  elected  President.  The  Republicans  in  Con 
gress,  checked  for  a  time  by  Johnson,  were  at 
length  to  have  entire  sway  under  Thaddeus  Stev 
ens.  Reconstruction  was  to  be  thorough  and 
merciless.  To  meet  these  conditions  was  the  first 
requirement  of  the  Courier-Journal,  a  newspaper 
conducted  by  outlawed  rebels  and  published  on  the 
sectional  border  line.  The  task  was  not  an  easy 
one. 

There  is  never  a  cause  so  weak  that  it  does  not 
stir  into  ill-timed  activity  some  wild,  unpractical 
zealots  who  imagine  it  strong.  There  is  never  a 
cause  so  just  but  that  the  malevolent  and  the  mer 
cenary  will  seek  to  trade  upon  it.  The  South  was 
helpless ;  the  one  thing  needful  was  to  get  it  on  its 
feet,  and  though  the  bravest  and  the  wisest  saw  this 
plainly  enough  there  came  to  the  front — particu 
larly  in  Kentucky — a  small  but  noisy  body  of  poli 
ticians  who  had  only  worked  themselves  into  a  state 
of  war  when  it  was  too  late,  and  who  with  more  or 
less  of  aggression,  insisted  that  "the  states  lately  in 
rebellion"  still  had  rights,  which  they  were  able  to 
[182] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

maintain  and  which  the  North  could  be  forced  to 
respect. 

I  was  of  a  different  opinion.  It  seemed  to  me 
that  whatever  of  right  might  exist  the  South  was 
at  the  mercy  of  the  North;  that  the  radical  party 
led  by  Stevens  and  Wade  dominated  the  North 
and  could  dictate  its  own  terms ;  and  that  the  short 
est  way  round  lay  in  that  course  which  was  best 
calculated  to  disarm  radicalism  by  an  intelligent 
appeal  to  the  business  interests  and  conservative 
elements  of  Northern  society,  supported  by  a 
domestic  policy  of  justice  alike  to  whites  and 
blacks. 

Though  the  institution  of  African  slavery  was 
gone  the  negro  continued  the  subject  of  savage 
contention.  I  urged  that  he  be  taken  out  of  the 
arena  of  agitation,  and  my  way  of  taking  him  out 
was  to  concede  him  his  legal  and  civil  rights.  The 
lately  ratified  Constitutional  Amendments,  I  con 
tended,  were  the  real  Treaty  of  Peace  between  the 
North  and  South.  The  recognition  of  these  Amend 
ments  in  good  faith  by  the  white  people  of  the 
South  was  indispensable  to  that  perfect  peace 
which  was  desired  by  the  best  people  of  both  sec 
tions.  The  political  emancipation  of  the  blacks  was 

[183] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

essential  to  the  moral  emancipation  of  the  whites. 
With  the  disappearence  of  the  negro  question  as 
cause  of  agitation,  I  argued,  radicalism  of  the  in 
tense,  proscriptive  sort  would  die  out;  the  liberty- 
loving,  patriotic  people  of  the  North  would  assert 
themselves ;  and,  this  one  obstacle  to  a  better  under 
standing  removed,  the  restoration  of  Constitu 
tional  Government  would  follow,  being  a  matter  of 
momentous  concern  to  the  body  of  the  people  both 
North  and  South. 

Such  a  policy  of  conciliation  suited  the  Southern 
extremists  as  little  as  it  suited  the  Northern  ex 
tremists.  It  took  from  the  politicians  their  best 
card.  South  no  less  than  North,  "the  bloody  shirt" 
was  trumps.  It  could  always  be  played.  It  was 
easy  to  play  it  and  it  never  failed  to  catch  the  un 
thinking  and  to  arouse  the  excitable.  What  cared 
the  perennial  candidate  so  he  got  votes  enough? 
What  cared  the  professional  agitator  so  his  appeals 
to  passion  brought  him  his  audience? 

It  is  a  fact  that  until  Lamar  delivered  his  eulogy 
on  Sumner  not  a  Southern  man  of  prominence 
used  language  calculated  to  placate  the  North,  and 
between  Lamar  and  Grady  there  was  an  interval 
of  fifteen  years.  There  was  not  a  Democratic  press 
[184] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

worthy  the  name  either  North  or  South.  During 
those  evil  days  the  Courier-Journal  stood  alone, 
having  no  party  or  organized  following.  At  length 
it  was  joined  on  the  Northern  side  by  Greeley. 
Then  Schurz  raised  his  mighty  voice.  Then  came 
the  great  liberal  movement  of  1871-72,  with  its 
brilliant  but  ill-starred  campaign  and  its  tragic 
finale;  and  then  there  set  in  what,  for  a  season, 
seemed  the  deluge. 

But  the  cause  of  Constitutional  Government  was 
not  dead.  It  had  been  merely  dormant.  Cham 
pions  began  to  appear  in  unexpected  quarters.  New 
men  spoke  up,  North  and  South.  In  spite  of  the 
Republican  landslide  of  1872,  in  1874  the  Demo 
crats  swept  the  Empire  State.  They  carried  the 
popular  branch  of  Congress  by  an  overwhelming 
majority.  In  the  Senate  they  had  a  respectable  mi 
nority,  with  Thurman  and  Bayard  to  lead  it.  In 
the  House  Randall  and  Kerr  and  Cox,  Lamar, 
Beck  and  Knott  were  about  to  be  reenforced  by 
Hill  and  Tucker  and  Mills  and  Gibson.  The  logic 
of  events  was  at  length  subduing  the  rodomontade 
of  soap-box  oratory.  Empty  rant  was  to  yield  to 
reason.  For  all  its  mischances  and  melancholy  end 
ing  the  .Greeley  campaign  had  shortened  the  dis 
tance  across  the  bloody  chasm. 

[185] 


CHAPTER  THE  EIGHTH 

FEMINISM    AND    WOMAN    SUFFRAGE  —  THE    ADVEN 
TURESS     IN     POLITICS     AND     SOCIETY — A    REAL 

HEROINE 

I 

IT  WOULD  not  be  the  writer  of  this  narrative 
if  he  did  not  interject  certain  opinions  of  his 
own  which  parties  and  politicians,  even  his  news 
paper  colleagues,  have  been  wont  to  regard  as 
peculiar.  By  common  repute  he  has  been  an  all- 
round  old-line  Democrat  of  the  regulation  sort. 
Yet  on  the  three  leading  national  questions  of  the 
last  fifty  years — the  Negro  question,  the  Greenback 
question  and  the  Free  Silver  question — he  has 
challenged  and  antagonized  the  general  direction 
of  that  party.  He  takes  some  pride  to  himself  that 
in  each  instanqe  the  result  vindicated  alike  his  fore 
cast  and  his  insubordination. 

To  one  who  witnessed  the  break-up  of  the  Whig 
party  in  1853  and  of  the  Democratic  Party  in  1860 
the  plight  in  which  parties  find  themselves  at  this 
[186] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

time  may  be  described  as  at  least,  suggestive.  The 
feeling  is  at  once  to  laugh  and  to  whistle.  Too  much 
"fuss  and  feathers"  in  Winfield  Scott  did  the  busi 
ness  for  the  Whigs.  Too  much  "bearded  lady"  in 
Charles  Evans  Hughes  perhaps  cooked  the  goose 
of  the  Republicans.  Too  much  Wilson — but  let  me 
not  fall  into  Use  majeste.  The  Whigs  went  into 
Know-Nothingism  and  Free  Soilism.  Will  the 
Democrats  go  into  Prohibition  and  paternalism? 
And  the  Republicans 

The  old  sectional  alignment  of  North  and  South 
has  been  changed  to  East  and  West. 

For  the  time  being  the  politicians  of  both 
parties  are  in  something  of  a  funk.  It  is  the  nature 
of  parties  thus  situate  to  fancy  that  there  is  no 
hereafter,  riding  in  their  dire  confusion  headlong 
for  a  fall.  Little  other  than  the  labels  being  left, 
nobody  can  tell  what  will  happen  to  either. 

Progressivism  seems  the  cant  of  the  indifferent. 
Accentuated  by  the  indecisive  vote  in  the  elections 
and  heralded  by  an  ambitious  President  who  writes 
Humanity  bigger  than  he  writes  the  United  States, 
and  is  accused  of  aspiring  to  world  leadership, 
democracy  unterrified  and  undefiled — the  democ 
racy  of  Jefferson,  Jackson  and  Tilden  an- 

[187] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

cient  history — has  become  a  back  number.  Yet  our 
officials  still  swear  to  a  Constitution.  We  have  not 
eliminated  state  lines.  State  rights  are  not  wholly 
dead. 

The  fight  between  capital  and  labor  is  on.  No 
one  can  predict  where  it  will  end.  Shall  it  prove 
another  irrepressible  conflict?  Are  its  issues  irre 
concilable?  Must  the  alternative  of  the  future  lie 
between  Socialism  and  Civil  War,  or  both?  Prog 
ress!  Progress!  Shall  there  be  no  stability  in 
either  actualities  or  principles?  And — and — what 
about  the  Bolsheviki? 

II 

Parties,  like  men,  have  their  ups  and  downs. 
Like  machines  they  get  out  of  whack  and  line. 
First  it  was  the  Federalists,  then  the  Whigs,  and 
then  the  Democrats.  Then  came  the  Republicans. 
And  then,  after  a  long  interruption,  the  Democrats 
again.  English  political  experience  repeats  itself 
in  America. 

A  taking  label  is  as  valuable  to  a  party  as  it  is 

to  a  nostrum.     It  becomes  in  time  an  asset.    We 

are  told  that  a  fool  is  born  every  minute,  and,  the 

average  man  being  something  of  a  fool,  the  label 

[188] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

easily  catches  him.  Hence  the  Democratic  Party 
and  the  Republican  Party. 

The  old  Whig  Party  went  to  pieces  on  the  rocks 
of  sectionalism.  The  institution  of  African  slavery 
arrived  upon  the  scene  at  length  as  the  paramount 
political  issue.  The  North,  which  brought  the 
Africans  here  in  its  ships,  finding  slave  labor  un 
profitable,  sold  its  slaves  to  the  South  at  a  good 
price,  and  turned  pious.  The  South  took  the  bait 
and  went  crazy. 

Finally,  we  had  a  pretty  kettle  of  fish.  Just  as 
the  Prohibitionists  are  going  to  convert  mortals 
into  angels  overnight  by  act  of  assembly — or  still 
better,  by  Constitutional  amendment — were  the 
short-haired  women  and  the  long-haired  men  of 
Boston  going  to  make  a  white  man  out  of  the  black 
man  by  Abolition.  The  Southern  Whigs  could  not 
see  it  and  would  not  stand  for  it.  So  they  fell  in 
behind  the  Democrats.  The  Northern  Whigs,  hav 
ing  nowhere  else  to  go,  joined  the  Republicans. 

The  wise  men  of  both  sections  saw  danger  ahead. 
The  North  was  warned  that  the  South  would  fight, 
the  South,  that  if  it  did  it  went  against  incredible 
odds.  Neither  would  take  the  warning.  Party 
spirit  ran  wild.  Extremism  had  its  fling.  Thus  a 

[189] 


"MARSE  HEXRY" 

long,  bloody  and  costly  War  of  Sections — a 
fraternal  war  if  ever  there  was  one — brought  on  by 
alternating  intolerance,  the  politicians  of  both 
sides  gambling  upon  the  credulity  and  ignorance  of 
the  people. 

Hindsight  is  readier,  certainly  surer,  than  fore 
sight.  It  comes  easier  and  shows  clearer.  Any 
body  can  now  see  that  the  slavery  problem  might 
have  had  a  less  ruinous  solution;  that  the  moral 
issue  might  have  been  compromised  from  time  to 
time  and  in  the  end  disposed  of.  Slave  labor  even 
at  the  South  had  shown  itself  illusory,  costly  and 
clumsy.  The  institution  untenable,  modern  thought 
against  it,  from  the  first  it  was  doomed. 

But  the  extremists  would  not  have  it.  Each 
played  to  the  lead  of  the  other.  Whilst  Wendell 
Phillips  was  preaching  the  equality  of  races,  death 
to  the  slaveholders  and  the  brotherhood  of  man  at 
the  North,  William  Lowndes  Yancey  was  exclaim 
ing  that  cotton  was  king  at  the  South,  and,  to  es 
tablish  these  false  propositions,  millions  of  good 
Americans  proceeded  to  cut  one  another's  throats. 

There  were  agitators  and  agitators  in  those  days 
as  there  are  in  these.  The  agitator,  like  the  poor, 
we  have  always  with  us.  It  used  to  be  said  even  at 
[190] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

the  North  that  Wendell  Phillips  was  just  a  clever 
comedian.  William  Lowndes  Yancey  was  scarcely 
that.  He  was  a  serious,  sincere,  untraveled  pro 
vincial,  possessing  unusual  gifts  of  oratory.  He 
had  the  misfortune  to  kill  a  friend  in  a  duel  when 
a  young  man,  and  the  tragedy  shadowed  his  life. 
He  clung  to  his  plantation  and  rarely  went  away 
from  home.  When  sent  to  Europe  by  the  South  as 
its  Ambassador  in  1861,  he  discovered  the  futility 
of  his  scheme  of  a  Southern  confederacy,  and,  see 
ing  the  cornerstone  of  the  philosophy  on  which  he 
had  constructed  his  pretty  fabric,  overthrown,  he 
came  home  despairing,  to  die  of  a  broken  heart. 

The  moral  alike  for  governments  and  men  is: 
Keep  the  middle  of  the  road. 

in 

Which  brings  us  to  Feminism.  I  will  not  write 
Woman  Suffrage,  for  that  is  an  accomplished  fact 
— for  good  or  evil  we  shall  presently  be  better  able 
to  determine. 

Life  is  an  adventure  and  all  of  us  adventurers — 
saving  that  the  word  presses  somewhat  harder  upon 
the  woman  than  the  man — most  things  do  in  fact, 
whereby  she  is  given  greater  endurance — leaving  to 

[191] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

men  the  duty  of  caring  for  the  women;  and,  if 
need  be,  looking  death  squarely  and  defiantly  in 
the  face. 

The  world  often  puts  the  artificial  before  the 
actual ;  but  under  the  dispensation  of  the  Christian 
civilization — derived  from  the  Hebraic — the  family 
requiring  a  head,  headship  is  assigned  to  the  male. 
This  male  is  commonly  not  much  to  speak  of  for 
beauty  of  form  or  decency  of  behavior.  He  is 
made  purposely  tough  for  work  and  fight.  He 
gets  toughened  by  outer  contact.  But  back  of  all 
are  the  women,  the  children  and  the  home. 

I  have  been  fighting  the  woman's  battle  for 
equality  in  the  things  that  count,  all  my  life.  I 
would  despise  myself  if  I  had  not  been.  In  con 
testing  precipitate  universal  suffrage  for  women, 
I  conceived  that  I  was  still  fighting  the  woman's 
battle. 

We  can  escape  none  of  Nature's  laws.  But  we 
need  not  handicap  ourselves  with  artificial  laws. 
At  best,  life  is  an  experiment,  Death  the  final  ad 
venture.  Feminism  seems  to  me  its  next  of  kin; 
still  we  may  not  call  the  woman  who  assails  the 
soap  boxes — even  those  that  antic  about  the  White 
House  gates — by  the  opprobrious  terms  of  ad- 
[192] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

venturess.  Where  such  a  one  is  not  a  lunatic  she  is 
a  nuisance.  There  are  women  and  women. 

We  may  leave  out  of  account  the  shady  ladies  of 
history.  Neither  Aspasia  nor  Lucrezia  Borgia 
nor  the  Marquise  de  Brinvilliers  could  with  ac 
curacy  be  called  an  adventuress.  The  term  is  of 
later  date.  Its  origin  and  growth  have  arisen  out 
of  the  complexities  of  modern  society. 

In  fiction  Milady  and  Madame  Marneffe  come 
in  for  first  honors — in  each  the  leopard  crossed  on 
the  serpent  and  united  under  a  petticoat,  beauti 
ful  and  wicked — but  since  the  Balzac  and  Dumas 
days  the  story-tellers  and  stage-mongers  have  made 
exceeding  free  with  the  type,  and  we  have  between 
Herman  Merivale's  Stephanie  de  Mohrivart  and 
Victorien  Sardou's  Zica  a  very  theater — or  shall 
we  say  a  charnel  house — of  the  woman  with  the 
past;  usually  portrayed  as  the  victim  of  circum 
stance;  unprincipled  through  cruel  experience;  in 
sensible  through  lack  of  conscience;  sexless  in  soul, 
but  a  siren  in  seductive  arts;  cold  as  ice;  hard  as 
iron;  implacable  as  the  grave,  pursuing  her  ends 
with  force  of  will,  intellectual  audacity  and  elegance 
of  manner,  yet,  beneath  this  brilliant  depravity, 
capable  of  self-pity,  yielding  anon  in  moments  of 

[193] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

depression  to  a  sudden  gleam  of  human  tenderness 
and  a  certain  regret  for  the  innocence  she  has  lost. 

Such  a  one  is  sometimes,  though  seldom,  met  in 
real  life.  But  many  pretenders  may  be  encountered 
at  Monte  Carlo  and  other  European  resorts.  They 
range  from  the  Parisian  cocotte,  signalized  by  her 
chic  apparel,  to  the  fashionable  divorcee  who  in  try 
ing  her  luck  at  the  tables  keeps  a  sharp  lookout  for 
the  elderly  gent  with  the  wad,  often  fooled  by  the 
enterprising  sport  who  has  been  there  before. 

These  are  out  and  out  professional  adventuresses. 
There  are  other  adventuresses,  however,  than  those 
of  the  story  and  the  stage,  the  casino  and  the 
cabaret.  The  woman  with  the  past  becomes  the 
girl  with  the  future. 

Curiously  enough  this  latter  is  mainly,  almost  ex 
clusively,  recruited  from  our  countrywomen,  who  to 
an  abnormal  passion  for  foreign  titles  join  surpass 
ing  ignorance  of  foreign  society.  Thus  she  is  ready 
to  the  hand  of  the  Continental  fortune  seeker 
masquerading  as  a  nobleman — occasionally  but  not 
often  the  black  sheep  of  some  noble  family — carry 
ing  not  a  bona  fide  but  a  courtesy  title — the  count 
and  the  no-account,  the  lord  and  the  Lord  knows 
who!  The  Yankee  girl  with  a  dot  had  become  be- 
[194] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

fore  the  world  war  a  regular  quarry  for  impecu 
nious  aristocrats  and  clever  crooks,  the  matrimo 
nial  results  tragic  in  their  frequency  and  squalor. 

Another  curious  circumstance  is  the  readiness 
with  which  the  American  newspaper  tumbles  to 
these  frauds.  The  yellow  press  especially  luxuriates 
in  them:  woodcuts  the  callow  bedizened  bride,  the 
jaded  game-worn  groom;  dilates  upon  the  big 
money  interchanged ;  glows  over  the  tin-plate  stars 
and  imaginary  garters  and  pinchbeck  crowns ;  and 
keeping  the  pictorial  paraphernalia  in  cold  but  not 
forgotten  storage  waits  for  the  inevitable  scandal, 
and  then,  with  lavish  exaggeration,  works  the  old 
story  over  again. 

These  newspapers  ring  all  the  sensational 
changes.  Now  it  is  the  wondrous  beauty  with  the 
cool  million,  who,  having  married  some  illegitimate 
of  a  minor  royal  house,  will  probably  be  the  next 
Queen  of  Rigmarolia,  and  now — ever  increasing 
the  dose — it  is  the  ten-million-dollar  widow  who  is 
going  to  marry  the  King  of  Pontarabia's  brother, 
and  may  thus  aspire  to  be  one  day  Empress  of 
Sahara. 

Old  European  travelers  can  recall  many  funny 
and  sometimes  melancholy  incidents — episodes — 

[195] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

histories — of  which  they  have  witnessed  the  begin 
ning  and  the  end,  carrying  the  self-same  denoue 
ment  and  lesson. 

IV 

As  there  are  women  and  women  there  are  many 
kinds  of  adventuresses ;  not  all  of  them  wicked  and 
detestable.  But,  good  or  bad,  the  lot  of  the  ad 
venturess  is  at  best  a  hard  lot.  Be  she  a  girl  with 
a  future  or  a  woman  with  a  past  she  is  still  a  woman, 
and  the  world  can  never  be  too  kind  to  its  women — 
the  child  bearers,  the  home  makers,  the  moral  light 
of  the  universe  as  they  meet  the  purpose  of  God 
and  Nature  and  seek  not  to  thwart  it  by  unsexing 
themselves  in  order  that  they  may  keep  step  with 
man  in  ways  of  self-indulgent  dalliance.  The  ad 
venturess  of  fiction  always  comes  to  grief.  But 
the  adventuress  in  real  life — the  prudent  ad 
venturess  who  draws  the  line  at  adultery — the 
would-be  leader  of  society  without  the  wealth — 
the  would-be  political  leader  without  the  masculine 
fiber — is  sure  of  disappointment  in  the  end. 

Take  the  agitation  over  Suffragism.    What  is  it 
that  the  woman  suffragette  expects  to  get?     No 
one  of  them  can,  or  does,  clearly  tell  us. 
[196] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

It  is  feminism,  rather  than  suffragism,  which  is 
dangerous.  Now  that  they  have  it,  my  fear  is  that 
the  leaders  will  not  stop  with  the  ballot  for  women. 
They  are  too  fond  of  the  spotlight.  It  has  become 
a  necessity  for  them.  If  all  women  should  fall  in 
with  them  there  would  be  nothing  of  womanhood 
left,  and  the  world  bereft  of  its  women  will  become 
a  masculine  harlotocracy. 

Let  me  repeat  that  I  have  been  fighting  wom 
an's  battles  in  one  way  and  another  all  my  life. 
I  am  not  opposed  to  Votes  for  Women.  But  I 
would  discriminate  and  educate,  and  even  at  that 
rate  I  would  limit  the  franchise  to  actual  taxpayers, 
and,  outside  of  these,  confine  it  to  charities,  correc 
tions  and  schools,  keeping  woman  away  from  the 
dirt  of  politics.  I  do  not  believe  the  ballot  will 
benefit  woman  and  cannot  help  thinking  that  in 
seeking  unlimited  and  precipitate  suffrage  the 
women  who  favor  it  are  off  their  reckoning!  I 
doubt  the  performances  got  up  to  exploit  it,  though 
somehow,  when  the  hikers  started  from  New  York 
to  Albany,  and  afterward  from  New  York  to 
Washington,  the  inspiring  thought  of  Bertha  von 
Hillern  came  back  to  me. 

I  am  sure  the  reader  never  heard  of  her.  As  it 

[197] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

makes  a  pretty  story  let  me  tell  it.  Many 
years  ago — don't  ask  me  how  many — there  was  a 
young  woman,  Bertha  von  Hillern  by  name,  a  poor 
art  student  seeking  money  enough  to  take  her 
abroad,  who  engaged  with  the  management  of  a 
hall  in  Louisville  to  walk  one  hundred  miles  around 
a  fixed  track  in  twenty-four  consecutive  hours. 
She  did  it.  Her  share  of  the  gate  money,  I  was 
told,  amounted  to  three  thousand  dollars. 

I  shall  never  forget  the  closing  scenes  of  the 
wondrous  test  of  courage  and  endurance.  She  was  a 
pretty,  fair-haired  thing,  a  trifle  undersized,  but 
shapely  and  sinewy.  The  vast  crowd  that  without 
much  diminution,  though  with  intermittent  changes, 
had  watched  her  from  start  to  finish,  began  to  grow 
tense  with  the  approach  to  the  end,  and  the  last 
hour  the  enthusiasm  was  overwhelming.  Wave 
upon  wave  of  cheering  followed  every  footstep  of 
the  plucky  girl,  rising  to  a  storm  of  exultation  as 
the  final  lap  was  reached. 

More  dead  than  alive,  but  game  to  the  core,  the 
little  heroine  was  carried  off  the  field,  a  winner, 
every  heart  throbbing  with  human  sympathy,  every 
eye  wet  with  proud  and  happy  tears.  It  is  not 
possible  adequately  to  describe  all  that  happened. 
[198] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

One  must  have  been  there  and  seen  it  fully  to  com 
prehend  the  glory  of  it. 

Touching  the  recent  Albany  and  Washington 
hikes  and  hikers  let  me  say  at  once  that  I  cannot 
approve  the  cause  of  Votes  for  women  as  I  had  ap 
proved  the  cause  of  Bertha  von  Hillern.  Where 
she  showed  heroic,  most  of  the  suffragettes  appear 
to  me  grotesque.  Where  her  aim  was  rational, 
their  aim  has  been  visionary.  To  me  the  younger 
of  them  seem  as  children  who  need  to  be  spanked 
and  kissed.  There  has  been  indeed  about  the  whole 
Suffrage  business  something  pitiful  and  comic. 

Often  I  have  felt  like  swearing  "You  idiots  1" 
and  then  like  crying  "Poor  dears!"  But  I  have 
kept  on  with  them,  and  had  I  been  in  Albany  or 
Washington  I  would  have  caught  Rosalie  Jones 
in  my  arms,  and  before  she  could  say  "Jack  Robin 
son"  have  exclaimed:  "You  ridiculous  child,  go  and 
get  a  bath  and  put  on  some  pretty  clothes  and  come 
and  join  us  at  dinner  in  the  State  Banquet  Hall, 
duly  made  and  provided  for  you  and  the  rest  of  you 
delightful  sillies." 


[199] 


CHAPTER  THE  NINTH 

DR.  NORVIN  GREEN — JOSEPH  PULITZER — CHESTER  A. 
ARTHUR — GENERAL  GRANT — THE  CASE  OF  FITZ 
JOHN  PORTER 

I 

TRUTH  we  are  told  is  stranger  than  fiction. 
I  have  found  it  so  in  the  knowledge  which  has 
variously  come  to  me  of  many  interesting  men  and 
women.  Of  these  Dr.  Norvin  Green  was  a  striking 
example.  To  have  sprung  from  humble  parentage 
in  the  wilds  of  Kentucky  and  to  die  at  the  head  of 
the  most  potential  corporation  in  the  world  —  to 
have  held  this  place  against  all  comers  by  force  of 
abilities  deemed  indispensable  to  its  welfare — to 
have  gone  the  while  his  ain  gait,  disdaining  the  pre 
cepts  of  Doctor  Franklin — who,  by  the  way,  did 
not  trouble  overmuch  to  follow  them  himself — 
seems  so  unusual  as  to  rival  the  most  stirring  stories 
of  the  novel  mongers. 

When  I  first  met  Doctor  Green  he  was  president 
of  a  Kentucky  railway  company.     He  had  been, 
[200] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

however,  one  of  the  organizers  of  the  Western 
Union  Telegraph  Company.  He  deluded  himself 
for  a  little  by  political  ambitions.  He  wanted  to 
go  to  the  Senate  of  the  United  States,  and  during 
a  legislative  session  of  prolonged  balloting  at 
Frankfort  he  missed  his  election  by  a  single  vote. 

It  may  be  doubted  whether  he  would  have  cut  a 
considerable  figure  at  Washington.  His  talents 
were  constructive  rather  than  declamatory.  He 
was  called  to  a  greater  field — though  he  never 
thought  it  so — and  was  foremost  among  those  who 
developed  the  telegraph  system  of  the  country  al 
most  from  its  infancy.  He  possessed  the  daring 
of  the  typical  Kentuckian,  with  the  dead  calm  of 
the  stoic  philosopher;  imperturbable;  never  vexed 
or  querulous  or  excited;  denying  himself  none  of 
the  indulgences  of  the  gentleman  of  leisure.  We 
grew  to  be  constant  comrades  and  friends,  and  when 
he  returned  to  New  York  to  take  the  important 
post  which  to  the  end  of  his  days  he  filled  so  com 
pletely  his  office  in  the  Western  Union  Building  be 
came  my  downtown  headquarters. 

There  I  met  Jay  Gould  familiarly;  and  resumed 
acquaintance  with  Russell  Sage,  whom  I  had  known 
when  a  lad  in  Washington,  he  a  hayseed  member 

[201] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

of  Congress;  and  occasionally  other  of  the  Wall 
Street  leaders.  In  a  small  way — though  not  for 
long — I  caught  the  stock-gambling  fever.  But  I 
was  on  the  "inside,"  and  it  was  a  cold  day  when  I 
did  not  "clean  up"  a  goodly  amount  to  waste  up 
town  in  the  evening.  I  may  say  that  I  gave  this 
over  through  sheer  disgust  of  acquiring  so  much 
and  such  easy  and  useless  money,  for,  having  no 
natural  love  of  money — no  aptitude  for  making 
money  breed — no  taste  for  getting  it  except  to 
spend  it — earning  by  my  own  accustomed  and 
fruitful  toil  always  a  sufficiency — the  distractions 
and  dissipations  it  brought  to  my  annual  vacations 
and  occasional  visits,  affronted  in  a  way  my  self- 
respect,  and  palled  upon  my  rather  eager  quest  of 
pleasure.  Money  is  purely  relative.  The  root  of 
all  evil,  too.  Too  much  of  it  may  bring  ills  as 
great  as  not  enough. 

At  the  outset  of  my  stock-gambling  experience 
I  was  one  day  in  the  office  of  President  Edward 
H.  Green,  of  the  Louisville  and  Nashville  Rail 
way,  no  relation  of  Dr.  Norvin  Green,  but  the  hus 
band  of  the  famous  Hetty  Green.  He  said  to  me, 
"How  are  you  in  stocks?" 

"What  do  you  mean?"  said  I. 
[202] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

"Why,"  he  said,  "do  you  buy  long,  or  short?  Are 
you  lucky  or  unlucky?" 

"You  are  talking  Greek  to  me,"  I  answered. 

"Didn't  you  ever  put  up  any  money  on  a  mar 
gin?" 

"Never." 

"Bless  me!  You  are  a  virgin.  I  want  to  try 
your  luck.  Look  over  this  stock  list  and  pick  a 
stock.  I  will  take  a  crack  at  it.  All  I  make  we'll 
divide,  and  all  we  lose  I'll  pay." 

"Will  you  leave  this  open  for  an  hour  or  two?" 

"What  is  the  matter  with  it — is  it  not  liberal 

enough?" 

"The  matter  is  that  I  am  going  over  to  the  West 
ern'  Union  to  lunch.  The  Gould  party  is  to  sit  in 
with  the  Orton-Green  party  for  the  first  time  after 
their  fight,  and  I  am  asked  especially  to  be  there. 
I  may  pick  up  something." 

Big  Green,  as  he  was  called,  paused  a  moment 
reflectively.  "I  don't  want  any  tip — especially 
from  that  bunch,"  said  he.  "I  want  to  try  your 
virgin  luck.  But,  go  ahead,  and  let  me  know  this 
afternoon." 

At  luncheon  I  sat  at  Doctor  Green's  right,  Jay 
Gould  at  his  left.  For  the  first  and  last  time  in  its 

[203] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

history  wine  was  served  at  this  board;  Russell  Sage 
was  effusive  in  his  demonstrations  of  affection  and 
went  on  with  his  stories  of  my  boyhood ;  every  one 
sought  to  take  the  chill  off  the  occasion;  and  we  had 
a  most  enjoyable  time  instead  of  what  promised  to 
be  rather  a  frosty  formality.  When  the  rest  had 
departed,  leaving  Doctor  Green,  Mr.  Gould  and 
myself  at  table,  mindful  of  what  I  had  come  for,  in 
a  bantering  way  I  said  to  Doctor  Green:  "Now 
that  I  am  a  Wall  Street  ingenu,  why  don't  you  tell 
me  something?" 

Gould  leaned  across  the  table  and  said  in  his 
velvet  voice:  "Buy  Texas  Pacific." 

Two  or  three  days  after,  Texas  Pacific  fell  off 
sixty  points  or  more.  I  did  not  see  Big  Green 
again.  Five  or  six  months  later  I  received  from 
him  a  statement  of  account  which  I  could  never 
have  unraveled,  with  a  check  for  some  thousands  of 
dollars,  my  one-half  profit  on  such  and  such  an 
operation.  Texas  Pacific  had  come  back  again. 

Two  or  three  years  later  I  sat  at  Doctor  Green's 
table  with  Mr.  Gould,  just  as  we  had  sat  the  first 
day.  Mr.  Gould  recalled  the  circumstance. 

"I  did  not  think  I  could  afford  to  have  you 
lose  on  my  suggestion  and  I  went  to  cover  your 
[204] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

loss,  when  I  found  five  thousand  shares  of  Texas 
Pacific  transferred  on  the  books  of  the  company 
in  your  name.  I  knew  these  could  not  be  yours.  I 
thought  the  buyer  was  none  other  than  the  man  I 
was  after,  and  I  began  hammering  the  stock.  I 
have  been  curious  ever  since  to  make  sure  whether 
I  was  right." 

"Whom  did  you  suspect,  Mr.  Gould?"  I  asked. 

"My  suspect  was  Victor  Newcomb,"  he  replied. 

I  then  told  him  what  had  happened.  "Dear, 
dear,"  he  cried.  "Ned  Green!  Big  Green.  Well, 
well!  You  do  surprise  me.  I  would  rather  have 
done  him  a  favor  than  an  injury.  I  am  rejoiced  to 
learn  that  no  harm  was  done  and  that,  after  all, 
you  and  he  came  out  ahead." 

It  was  about  this  time  Jay  Gould  had  bought  of 
the  Thomas  A.  Scott  estate  a  New  York  daily 
newspaper  which,  in  spite  of  brilliant  writers  like 
Manton  Marble  and  William  Henry  Hurlbut,  had 
never  been  a  moneymaker.  This  was  the  World. 
He  offered  me  the  editorship  with  forty-nine  of  the 
hundred  shares  of  stock  on  very  easy  terms,  which 
nowise  tempted  me.  But  two  or  three  years  after, 
I  daresay  both  weary  and  hopeless  of  putting  up 
so  much  money  on  an  unyielding  investment,  he 

[205] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

was  willing  to  sell  outright,  and  Joseph  Pulitzer 
became  the  purchaser. 

His  career  is  another  illustration  of  the  saying 
that  truth  is  stranger  than  fiction. 

II 

Joseph  Pulitzer  and  I  came  together  familiarly 
at  the  Liberal  Republican  Convention,  which  met 
at  Cincinnati  in  1872 — the  convocation  of  cranks,  as 
it  was  called — and  nominated  Horace  Greeley  for 
President.  He  was  a  delegate  from  Missouri. 
Subsequent  events  threw  us  much  together.  He 
began  his  English  newspaper  experience  after  a 
kind  of  apprenticeship  on  a  German  daily  with 
Stilson  Hutchins,  another  interesting  character  of 
those  days.  It  was  from  Stilson  Hutchins  that  I 
learned  something  of  Pulitzer's  origin  and  begin 
nings,  for  he  never  spoke  much  of  himself. 

According  to  this  story  he  was  the  offspring  of 
a  runaway  marriage  between  a  subaltern  officer  in 
the  Austrian  service  and  a  Hungarian  lady  of  noble 
birth.  In  some  way  he  had  got  across  the  Atlantic, 
and  being  in  Boston,  a  wizened  youth  not  speaking 
a  word  of  English,  he  was  spirited  on  board  a  war 
ship.  Watching  his  chance  of  escape  he  leaped 
[206] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

overboard  in  the  darkness  of  night,  though  it  was 
the  dead  of  winter,  and  swam  ashore.  He  was 
found  unconscious  on  the  beach  by  some  charitable 
persons,  who  cared  for  him.  Thence  he  tramped  it 
to  St.  Louis,  where  he  heard  there  was  a  German 
colony,  and  found  work  on  a  coal  barge. 

It  was  here  that  the  journalistic  instinct  dawned 
upon  him.  He  began  to  carry  river  news  items  to 
the  Westliche  Post,  which  presently  took  him  on  its 
staff  of  regular  reporters. 

The  rest  was  easy.  He  learned  to  speak  and 
write  English,  was  transferred  to  the  paper  of 
which  Hutchins  was  the  head,  and  before  he  was 
five-and-twenty  became  a  local  figure. 

When  he  turned  up  in  New  York  with  an  offer 
to  purchase  the  World  we  met  as  old  friends.  Dur 
ing  the  interval  between  1872  and  1883  we  had  had 
a  runabout  in  Europe  and  I  was  able  to  render  him 
assistance  in  the  purchase  proceeding  he  was  having 
with  Gould.  When  this  was  completed  he  said  to 
me:  "You  are  at  entire  leisure;  you  are  worse  than 
that,  you  are  wasting  your  time  about  the  clubs  and 
watering  places,  doing  no  good  for  yourself,  or  any 
body  else.  I  must  first  devote  myself  to  the  reor 
ganization  of  the  business  end  of  it.  Here  is  a  blank 

[207] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

check.  Fill  it  for  whatever  amount  you  please  and 
it  will  be  honored.  I  want  you  to  go  upstairs  and 
organize  my  editorial  force  for  me." 

Indignantly  I  replied:  "Go  to  the  devil — you 
have  not  money  enough — there  is  not  money  enough 
in  the  universe — to  buy  an  hour  of  my  season's 
loaf." 

A  year  later  I  found  him  occupying  with  his  fam 
ily  a  splendid  mansion  up  the  Hudson,  with  a  great 
stable  of  carriages  and  horses,  living  like  a  country 
gentleman,  going  to  the  World  office  about  time  for 
luncheon  and  coming  away  in  the  early  afternoon. 
I  passed  a  week-end  with  him.  To  me  it  seemed 
the  precursor  of  ruin.  His  second  payment  was 
yet  to  be  made.  Had  I  been  in  his  place  I  would 
have  been  taking  my  meals  in  an  adjacent  hotel, 
sleeping  on  a  cot  in  one  of  the  editorial  rooms  and 
working  fifteen  hours  out  of  the  twenty-four.  To 
me  it  seemed  dollars  to  doughnuts  that  he  would 
break  down  and  go  to  smash.  But  he  did  not — an 
other  case  of  destiny. 

I  was  abiding  with  my  family  at  Monte  Carlo, 

when  in  his  floating  palace,  the  Liberty,  he  came 

into  the  harbor  of  Mentone.     Then  he  bought  a 

shore  palace  at  Cap  Martin.    That  season,  and  the 

[208] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

next  two  or  three  seasons,  we  made  voyages  to 
gether  from  one  end  to  the  other  of  the  Mediter 
ranean,  visiting  the  islands,  especially  Corsica  and 
Elba,  shrines  of  Napoleon  whom  he  greatly  ad 
mired. 

He  was  a  model  host.  He  had  surrounded  him 
self  with  every  luxury,  including  some  agreeable  re 
tainers,  and  lived  like  a  prince  aboard.  His  blind 
ness  had  already  overtaken  him.  Other  physical 
ailments  assailed  him.  But  no  word  of  complaint 
escaped  his  lips  and  he  rarely  failed  to  sit  at  the 
head  of  his  table.  It  was  both  splendid  and  pitiful. 

Absolute  authority  made  Pulitzer  a  tyrant.  He 
regarded  his  newspaper  ownership  as  an  autocracy. 
There  was  nothing  gentle  in  his  domination,  nor,  I 
might  say,  generous  either.  He  seriously  lacked  the 
sense  of  humor,  and  even  among  his  familiars  could 
never  take  a  joke.  His  love  of  money  was  by  no 
means  inordinate.  He  spent  it  freely  though  not 
wastefully  or  joyously,  for  the  possession  of  it 
rather  flattered  his  vanity  than  made  occasion  for 
pleasure.  Ability  of  varying  kinds  and  degrees  he 
had,  a  veritable  genius  for  journalism  and  a  real 
capacity  for  affection.  He  held  his  friends  at  good 
account  and  liked  to  have  them  about  him.  During 

[209] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

the  early  days  of  his  success  he  was  disposed  to 
overindulgence,  not  to  say  conviviality.  He  was 
fond  of  Rhine  wines  and  an  excellent  judge  of 
them,  keeping  a  varied  assortment  always  at  hand. 
Once,  upon  the  Liberty,  he  observed  that  I  pre 
ferred  a  certain  vintage.  "You  like  this  wine?"  he 
said  inquiringly.  I  assented,  and  he  said,  "I  have 
a  lot  of  it  at  home,  and  when  I  get  back  I  will  send 
you  some."  I  had  quite  forgotten  when,  many 
months  after,  there  came  to  me  a  crate  containing 
enough  to  last  me  a  life-time. 

He  had  a  retentive  memory  and  rarely  forgot 
anything.  I  could  recall  many  pleasurable  inci 
dents  of  our  prolonged  and  varied  intimacy.  We 
were  one  day  wandering  about  the  Montmartre  re 
gion  of  Paris  when  we  came  into  a  hole-in-the-wall 
where  they  were  playing  a  piece  called  "Les  Bri 
gands."  It  was  melodrama  to  the  very  marrow  of 
the  bones  of  the  Apaches  that  gathered  and  glared 
about.  In  those  days,  the  "indemnity"  paid  and 
the  "military  occupation"  withdrawn,  everything 
French  pre-figured  hatred  of  the  German,  and  be 
sure  "Les  Brigands"  made  the  most  of  this;  each 
"brigand"  a  beer-guzzling  Teuton;  each  hero  a 
dare-devil  Gaul;  and,  when  Joan  the  Maid,  hero- 
[210] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

ine,  sent  Goetz  von  Berlichingen,  the  Vandal 
Chieftain,  sprawling  in  the  saw-dust,  there  was 
no  end  to  the  enthusiasm. 

"We  are  all  'brigands',"  said  Pulitzer  as  we  came 
away,  "differing  according  to  individual  character, 
to  race  and  pursuit.  Now,  if  I  were  writing  that 
play,  I  should  represent  the  villain  as  a  tyrannous 
City  Editor,  meanly  executing  the  orders  of  a 
niggardly  proprietor." 

"And  the  heroine?"  I  said. 

"She  should  be  a  beautiful  and  rich  young  lady," 
he  replied,  "who  buys  the  newspaper  and  marries 
the  cub — rescuing  genius  from  poverty  and  perse 
cution." 

He  was  not  then  the  owner  of  the  World.  He 
had  not  created  the  Post-Dispatch,  or  even  met  the 
beautiful  woman  who  became  his  wife.  He  was  a 
youngster  of  five  or  six  and  twenty,  revisiting  the 
scenes  of  his  boyhood  on  the  beautiful  blue  Danube, 
and  taking  in  Paris  for  a  lark. 

in 

I  first  met  General  Grant  in  my  own  house.  I 
had  often  been  invited  to  his  house.  As  far  back  as 
1870  John  Russell  Young,  a  friend  from  boyhood, 

[211] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

came  with  an  invitation  to  pass  the  week-end  as 
the  President's  guest  at  Long  Branch.  Many  of 
my  friends  had  cottages  there.  Of  afternoons  and 
evenings  they  played  an  infinitesimal  game  of  draw 
poker. 

"John,"  my  answer  was,  "I  don't  dare  to  do  so. 
I  know  that  I  shall  fall  in  love  with  General  Grant. 
We  are  living  in  rough  times — particularly  in 
rough  party  times.  We  have  a  rough  presidential 
campaign  ahead  of  us.  If  I  go  down  to  the  seashore 
and  go  in  swimming  and  play  penny-ante  with  Gen 
eral  Grant  I  shall  not  be  able  to  do  my  duty." 

It  was  thus  that  after  the  general  had  gone  out 
of  office  and  made  the  famous  journey  round  the 
world,  and  had  come  to  visit  relatives  in  Kentucky, 
that  he  accepted  a  dinner  invitation  from  me,  and 
I  had  a  number  of  his  friends  to  meet  him. 

Among  these  were  Dr.  Richardson,  his  early 
schoolmaster  when  the  Grant  family  lived  at  Mays- 
ville,  and  Walter  Haldeman,  my  business  partner, 
a  Maysville  boy,  who  had  been  his  schoolmate  at 
the  Richardson  Academy,  and  General  Cerro  Gor- 
do  Williams,  then  one  of  Kentucky's  Senators  in 
Congress,  and  erst  his  comrade  and  chum  when 
both  were  lieutenants  in  the  Mexican  War.  The 
[212] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

bars  were  down,  the  windows  were  shut  and  there 
was  no  end  of  hearty  hilarity.  Dr.  Richardson  had 
been  mentioned  by  Mr.  Haldeman  as  "the  only  man 
that  ever  licked  Grant,"  and  the  general  promptly 
retorted  "he  never  licked  me,"  when  the  good  old 
doctor  said,  "No,  Ulysses,  I  never  did — nor  Walter, 
either — for  you  two  were  the  best  boys  in  school." 

I  said  "General  Grant,  why  not  give  up  this 
beastly  politics,  buy  a  blue-grass  farm,  and  settle 
down  to  horse-raising  and  tobacco  growing  in  Ken 
tucky?"  And,  quick  as  a  flash — for  both  he  and  the 
company  perceived  that  it  was  "a  leading  question" 
— he  replied,  "Before  I  can  buy  a  farm  in  Kentucky 
I  shall  have  to  sell  a  farm  in  Missouri,"  which  left 
nothing  further  to  be  said. 

There  was  some  sparring  between  him  and  Gen 
eral  Williams  over  their  youthful  adventures. 
Finally  General  Williams,  one  of  the  readiest  and 
most  amusing  of  talkers,  returned  one  of  General 
Grant's  sallies  with,  "Anyhow,  I  know  of  a  man 
whose  life  you  took  unknown  to  yourself."  Then 
he  told  of  a  race  he  and  Grant  had  outside  of 
Galapa  in  1846.  "Don't  you  remember,"  he  said, 
"that  riding  ahead  of  me  you  came  upon  a  Mexican 
loaded  with  a  lot  of  milk  cans  piled  above  his  head 

[213] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

and  that  you  knocked  him  over  as  you  swept  by 
him?" 

"Yes,"  said  Grant,  "I  believed  if  I  stopped  or 
questioned  or  even  deflected  it  would  lose  me  the 
race.  I  have  not  thought  of  it  since.  But  now  that 
you  mention  it  I  recall  it  distinctly." 

"Well,"  WiUiams  continued,  "you  killed  him. 
Your  horse's  hoof  struck  him.  When,  seeing  I  was 
beaten,  I  rode  back,  his  head  was  split  wide  open. 
I  did  not  tell  you  at  the  time  because  I  knew  it 
would  cause  you  pain,  and  a  dead  greaser  more  or 
less  made  no  difference." 

Later  on  General  Grant  took  desk  room  in  Vic 
tor  Newcomb's  private  office  in  New  York.  There 
I  saw  much  of  him,  and  we  became  good  friends. 
He  was  the  most  interesting  of  men.  Soldierlike — 
monosyllabic — in  his  official  and  business  dealings 
he  threw  aside  all  formality  and  reserve  in  his  social 
intercourse,  delightfully  reminiscential,  indeed  a 
capital  story  teller.  I  do  not  wonder  that  he  had 
constant  and  disinterested  friends  who  loved  him 

sincerely. 

rv 

It  has  always  been  my  opinion  that  if  Chester  A. 
Arthur  had  been  named  by  the  Republicans  as  their 
[214] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

candidate  in  1884  they  would  have  carried  the  elec 
tion,  spite  of  what  Mr.  Elaine,  who  defeated  Arthur 
in  the  convention,  had  said  and  thought  about  the 
nomination  of  General  Sherman.  Arthur,  like 
Grant,  belonged  to  the  category  of  lovable  men  in 
public  life. 

There  was  a  gallant  captain  in  the  army  who  had 
slapped  his  colonel  in  the  face  on  parade.  Morally, 
as  man  to  man,  he  had  the  right  of  it.  But  military 
law  is  inexorable.  The  verdict  was  dismissal  from 
the  service.  I  went  with  the  poor  fellow's  wife  and 
her  sister  to  see  General  Hancock  at  Governor's 
Island.  It  was  a  most  affecting  meeting — the  gen 
eral,  tears  rolling  down  his  cheeks,  taking  them  into 
his  arms,  and,  when  he  could  speak,  saying:  "I  can 
do  nothing  but  hold  up  the  action  of  the  court  till 
Monday.  Your  recourse  is  the  President  and  a 
pardon;  I  will  recommend  it,  but" — putting  his 
hand  upon  my  shoulder — "here  is  the  man  to  get  the 
pardon  if  the  President  can  be  brought  to  see  the 
case  as  most  of  us  see  it." 

At  once  I  went  over  to  Washington,  taking 
Stephen  French  with  me.  When  we  entered  the 
President's  apartment  in  the  White  House  he  ad- 

[215] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

vanced  smiling  to  greet  us,  saying:  "I  know  what 
you  boys  are  after;  you  mean— 

"Yes,  Mr.  President,"  I  answered,  "we  do,  and 
if  ever " 

"I  have  thought  over  it,  sworn  over  it,  and  prayed 
over  it,"  he  said,  "and  I  am  going  to  pardon  him!" 


Another  illustrative  incident  happened  during 
the  Arthur  Administration.  The  dismissal  of  Gen. 
Fitz-John  Porter  from  the  army  had  been  the  sub 
ject  of  more  or  less  acrimonious  controversy.  Dur 
ing  nearly  two  decades  this  had  raged  in  army 
circles.  At  length  the  friends  of  Porter,  led  by 
Curtin  and  Slocum,  succeeded  in  passing  a  relief 
measure  through  Congress.  They  were  in  ecstasies. 
That  there  might  be  a  presidential  objection  had 
not  crossed  their  minds. 

Senator  McDonald,  of  Indiana,  a  near  friend  of 
General  Porter,  and  a  man  of  rare  worldly  wisdom, 
knew  better.  Without  consulting  them  he  came  to 
me. 

"You  are  personally  close  to  the  President,"  said 
he,  "and  you  must  know  that  if  this  bill  gets  to  the 
White  House  he  will  veto  it.  With  the  Republican 
[216] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

National  Convention  directly  ahead  he  is  bound  to 
veto  it.  It  must  not  be  allowed  to  get  to  him;  and 
you  are  the  man  to  stop  it.  They  will  listen  to  you 
and  will  not  listen  to  me." 

First  of  all,  I  went  to  the  White  House. 

"Mr.  President,"  I  said,  "I  want  you  to  authorize 
me  to  tell  Curtin  and  Slocum  not  to  send  the  Fitz- 
John  Porter  bill  to  you." 

"Why?"  he  answered. 

"Because,"  said  I,  "you  will  have  to  veto  it;  and, 
with  the  Frelinghuysens  wild  for  it,  as  well  as  others 
of  your  nearest  friends,  I  am  sure  you  don't  want 
to  be  obliged  to  do  that.  With  your  word  to  me  I 
can  stop  it,  and  have  it  for  the  present  at  least  held 

up-"    :  '    !  ••  I  £1! 

His  answer  was,  "Go  ahead." 

Then  I  went  to  the  Capitol.  Curtin  and  Slocum 
were  in  a  state  of  mind.  It  was  hard  to  make  them 
understand  or  believe  what  I  told  them. 

"Now,  gentlemen,"  I  continued,  "I  don't  mean 
to  argue  the  case.  It  is  not  debatable.  I  am  just 
from  the  White  House,  and  I  am  authorized  by  the 
President  to  say  that  if  you  send  this  bill  to  him  he 
will  veto  it." 

[217] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

That,  of  course,  settled  it.  They  held  it  up.  But 
after  the  presidential  election  it  reached  Arthur, 
and  he  did  veto  it.  Not  till  Cleveland  came  in  did 
Porter  obtain  his  restoration. 

Curiously  enough  General  Grant  approved  this. 
I  had  listened  to  the  debate  in  the  House — es 
pecially  the  masterly  speech  of  William  Walter 
Phelps — without  attaining  a  clear  understanding  of 
the  many  points  at  issue.  I  said  as  much  to  General 
Grant. 

"Why,"  he  replied,  "the  case  is  as  simple  as  A, 
B,  C.  Let  me  show  you." 

Then,  with  a  pencil  he  traced  the  Second  Bull 
Run  battlefield,  the  location  of  troops,  both  Federal 
and  Confederate,  and  the  exact  passage  in  the  ac 
tion  which  had  compromised  General  Porter. 

"If  Porter  had  done  what  he  was  ordered  to  do," 
he  went  on,  "Pope  and  his  army  would  have  been 
annihilated.  In  point  of  fact  Porter  saved  Pope's 
Army."  Then  he  paused  and  added:  "I  did  not  at 
the  outset  know  this.  I  was  for  a  time  of  a  different 
opinion  and  on  the  other  side.  It  was  Longstreet's 
testimony — which  had  not  been  before  the  first 
Court  of  Inquiry  that  convicted  Porter — which 
vindicated  him  and  convinced  me." 
[218] 


CHAPTER  THE  TENTH 

OF  LIAES  AND  LYING — WOMAN  SUFFRAGE  AND 
FEMINISM — THE  PROFESSIONAL  FEMALE — 
PARTIES,  POLITICS  AND  POLITICIANS  IN  AMERICA 

ALL  is  fair  in  love  and  war,  the  saying  hath  it. 
"Lord!"  cried  the  most  delightful  of  liars, 
"How  this  world  is  given  to  lying."    Yea,  and  how 
exigency  quickens  invention  and  promotes  deceit. 

Just  after  the  war  of  sections  I  was  riding  in  a 
train  with  Samuel  Bowles,  who  took  a  great  interest 
in  things  Southern.  He  had  been  impressed  by  a 
newspaper  known  as  The  Chattanooga  Rebel  and, 
as  I  had  been  its  editor,  put  innumerable  questions 
to  me  about  it  and  its  affairs.  Among  these  he 
asked  how  great  had  been  its  circulation.  Without 
explaining  that  often  an  entire  company,  in  some 
cases  an  entire  regiment,  subscribed  for  a  few 
copies,  or  a  single  copy,  I  answered :  "I  don't  know 
precisely,  but  somewhere  near  a  hundred  thousand, 

[219] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

I  take  it."    Then  he  said:     "Where  did  you  get 
your  press  power?" 

This  was,  of  course,  a  poser,  but  it  did  not  em 
barrass  me  in  the  least.  I  was  committed,  and  with 
out  a  moment's  thought  I  proceeded  with  an 
imaginary  explanation  which  he  afterward  declared 
had  been  altogether  satisfying.  The  story  was  too 
good  to  keep — maybe  conscience  pricked — and  in  a 
chummy  talk  later  along  I  laughingly  confessed. 

"You  should  tell  that  in  your  dinner  speech  to 
night,"  he  said.  "If  you  tell  it  as  you  have  just 
told  it  to  me,  it  will  make  a  hit,"  and  I  did. 

I  give  it  as  the  opinion  of  a  long  life  of  experience 
and  observation  that  the  newspaper  press,  whatever 
its  delinquencies,  is  not  a  common  liar,  but  the  most 
habitual  of  truth  tellers.  It  is  growing  on  its 
editorial  page  I  fear  a  little  vapid  and  colorless. 
But  there  is  a  general  and  ever-present  purpose  to 
print  the  facts  and  give  the  public  the  opportunity 
to  reach  its  own  conclusions. 

There  are  liars  and  liars,  lying  and  lying.  It  is, 
with  a  single  exception,  the  most  universal  and 
venial  of  human  frailties.  We  have  at  least  three 
kinds  of  lying  and  species,  or  types,  of  liars — first, 
the  common,  ordinary,  everyday  liar,  who  lies  with- 
[220] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

out  rime  or  reason,  rule  or  compass,  aim,  intent  or 
interest,  in  whose  mind  the  partition  between  truth 
and  falsehood  has  fallen  down ;  then  the  sensational, 
imaginative  liar,  who  has  a  tale  to  tell ;  and,  finally, 
the  mean,  malicious  liar,  who  would  injure  his 
neighbor. 

This  last  is,  indeed,  but  rare.  Human  nature  is 
at  its  base  amicable,  because  if  nothing  hinders  it 
wants  to  please.  All  of  us,  however,  are  more  or 
less  its  unconscious  victims. 

Competition  is  not  alone  the  life  of  trade;  it  is 
the  life  of  life ;  for  each  of  us  is  in  one  way,  or  an 
other,  competitive.  There  is  but  one  disinterested 
person  in  the  world,  the  mother  who  whether  of  the 
human  or  animal  kingdom,  will  die  for  her  young. 
Yet,  after  all,  hers,  too,  is  a  kind  of  selfishness. 

The  woman  is  becoming  over  much  a  professional 
female.  It  is  of  importance  that  we  begin  to  con 
sider  her  as  a  new  species,  having  enjoyed  her 
beauty  long  enough.  Is  the  world  on  the  way  to 
organic  revolution?  If  I  were  a  young  man  I  should 
not  care  to  be  the  lover  of  a  professional  female. 
As  an  old  man  I  have  affectionate  relations  with  a 
number  of  suffragettes,  as  they  dare  not  deny;  that 
is  to  say,  I  long  ago  accepted  woman  suffrage  as 

[221] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

inevitable,  whether  for  good  or  evil,  depending  upon 
whether  the  woman's  movement  is  going  to  stop 
with  suffrage  or  run  into  feminism,  changing  the 
character  of  woman  and  her  relations  to  men  and 

with  man. 

n 

I  have  never  made  party  differences  the  occasion 
of  personal  quarrel  or  estrangement.  On  the  con 
trary,  though  I  have  been  always  called  a  Democrat, 
I  have  many  near  and  dear  friends  among  the  Re 
publicans.  Politics  is  not  war.  Politics  would  not 
be  war  even  if  the  politicians  were  consistent  and 
honest.  But  there  are  among  them  so  many 
changelings,  cheats  and  rogues. 

Then,  in  politics  as  elsewhere,  circumstances  alter 
cases.  I  have  as  a  rule  thought  very  little  of  parties 
as  parties,  professional  politicians  and  party  lead 
ers,  and  I  think  less  of  them  as  I  grow  older.  The 
politician  and  the  auctioneer  might  be  described 
like  the  lunatic,  the  lover  and  the  poet,  as  "of 
imagination  all  compact."  One  sees  more  mares' 
nests  than  would  fill  a  book;  the  other  pure  gold  in 
pinchbeck  wares;  and  both  are  out  for  gudgeons. 

It  is  the  habit — nay,  the  business — of  the  party 
speaker  when  he  mounts  the  raging  stump  to  roar 
[222] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

his  platitudes  into  the  ears  of  those  who  have  the 
simplicity  to  listen,  though  neither  edified  nor  en 
lightened  ;  to  aver  that  the  horse  he  rides  is  sixteen 
feet  high ;  that  the  candidate  he  supports  is  a  giant ; 
and  that  he  himself  is  no  small  figure  of  a  man. 

Thus  he  resembles  the  auctioneer.  But  it  is  the 
mock  auctioneer  whom  he  resembles;  his  stock  in 
trade  being  largely,  if  not  altogether,  fraudulent. 
The  success  which  at  the  outset  of  party  welfare  at 
tended  this  legalized  confidence  game  drew  into  it 
more  and  more  players.  For  a  long  time  they  de 
ceived  themselves  almost  as  much  as  the  voters. 
They  had  not  become  professional.  They  were 
amateur.  Many  of  them  played  for  sheer  love  of 
the  gamble.  There  were  rules  to  regulate  the  play. 
But  as  time  passed  and  voters  multiplied,  the  pop 
ular  preoccupation  increased  the  temptations  and 
opportunities  for  gain,  inviting  the  enterprising, 
the  skillful  and  the  corrupt  to  reconstitute  patriot 
ism  into  a  commodity  and  to  organize  public  opinion 
into  a  bill  of  lading.  Thus  politics  as  a  trade, 
parties  as  trademarks,  the  politicians,  like  harlots, 
plying  their  vocation. 

Now  and  again  an  able,  honest  and  brave  man, 
who  aims  at  better  things,  appears.  In  the  event 

[223] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

that  fortune  favors  him  and  he  attains  high  station, 
he  finds  himself  surrounded  and  thwarted  by  men 
less  able  and  courageous,  who,  however  equal  to 
discovering  right  from  wrong,  yet  wear  the  party 
.collar,  owe  fealty  to  the  party  machine,  are  some 
times  actual  slaves  of  the  party  boss.  In  the  larger 
towns  we  hear  of  the  City  Hall  ring;  out  in  the 
counties  of  the  Court  House  ring.  We  rarely  any 
where  encounter  clean,  responsible  administration 
and  pure,  disinterested,  public  service. 

The  taxpayers  are  robbed  before  their  eyes.  The 
evil  grows  greater  as  we  near  the  centers  of  popula 
tion.  But  there  is  scarcely  a  village  or  hamlet 
where  graft  does  not  grow  like  weeds,  the  voters  as 
gullible  and  helpless  as  the  infatuated  victims  of 
bunko  tricks,  ingeniously  contrived  by  professional 
crooks  to  separate  the  fool  and  his  money.  Is  self- 
government  a  failure? 

None  of  us  would  allow  the  votaries  of  the  divine 
right  of  kings  to  tell  us  so,  albeit  we  are  ready 
enough  to  admit  the  imperfections  of  universal  suf 
frage,  too  often  committing  affairs  of  pith  and 
moment,  even  of  life  and  death,  to  the  arbitrament 
of  the  mob,  and  costing  more  in  cash  outlay  than 
royal  establishments. 
[224] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

The  quadrennial  period  in  American  politics, 
set  apart  and  dedicated  to  the  election  of  presidents, 
magnifies  these  evil  features  in  an  otherwise  ad 
mirable  system  of  government.  That  the  whipper- 
snappers  of  the  vicinage  should  indulge  their  pro 
pensities  comes  as  the  order  of  their  nature.  But 
the  party  leaders  are  not  far  behind  them.  Each  side 
construes  every  occurrence  as  an  argument  in  its 
favor,  assuring  it  certain  victory.  Take,  for  ex 
ample,  the  latest  state  election  anywhere.  In  point 
of  fact,  it  foretold  nothing.  It  threw  no  light  upon 
coming  events,  not  even  upon  current  events.  It 
leaves  the  future  as  hazy  as  before.  ,  Yet  the  man 
agers  of  either  party  affect  to  be  equally  confident 
that  it  presages  the  triumph  of  their  ticket  in  the 
next  national  election.  The  wonder  is  that  so  many 
of  the  voters  will  believe  and  be  influenced  by  such 
transparent  subterfuge. 

Is  there  any  remedy  for  all  this?  I  much  fear 
that  there  is  not.  Government,  like  all  else,  is  im 
possible  of  perfection.  It  is  as  man  is — good,  bad 
and  indifferent;  which  is  but  another  way  of  say 
ing  we  live  in  a  world  of  cross  purposes.  We  in 
America  prefer  republicanism.  But  would  despot 
ism  be  so  demurrable  under  a  wise  unselfish  despot? 

[225] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

ra 

Contemplating  the  contrasts  between  foreign  life 
and  foreign  history  with  our  own  one  cannot  help 
reflecting  upon  the  yet  more  startling  contrasts  of 
ancient  and  modern  religion  and  government.  I 
have  wandered  not  a  little  over  Europe  at  irregular 
intervals  for  more  than  fifty  years.  Always  a  de 
votee  to  American  institutions,  I  have  been 
strengthened  in  my  beliefs  by  what  I  have  encoun 
tered. 

The  mood  in  our  countrymen  has  been  overmuch 
to  belittle  things  American.  The  commercial  spirit 
in  the  United  States,  which  affects  to  be  national 
istic,  is  in  reality  cosmopolitan.  Money  being  its 
god,  French  money,  English  money,  anything  that 
calls  itself  money,  is  wealth  to  it.  It  has  no  time  to 
waste  on  theories  or  to  think  of  generics.  "Put 
money  in  thy  purse"  has  become  its  motto.  Money 
constitutes  the  reason  of  its  being.  The  organic  law 
of  the  land  is  Greek  to  it,  as  are  those  laws  of  God 
which  obstruct  it.  It  is  too  busy  with  its  greed  and 
gain  to  think,  or  to  feel,  on  any  abstract  subject. 
That  which  does  not  appeal  to  it  in  the  concrete  is 
of  no  interest  at  all. 
[226] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Just  as  in  the  days  of  Charles  V  and  Philip  II, 
all  things  yielded  to  the  theologian's  misconception 
of  the  spiritual  life  so  in  these  days  of  the  Billion 
aires  all  things  spiritual  and  abstract  yield  to  what 
they  call  the  progress  of  the  universe  and  the  lead 
ing  of  the  times.  Under  their  rule  we  have  had 
extraordinary  movement  just  as  under  the  lords  of 
the  Palatinate  and  the  Escurial — the  medieval 
union  of  the  devils  of  bigotry  and  power — Europe, 
which  was  but  another  name  for  Spain,  had  extraor 
dinary  movement.  We  know  where  it  ended  with 
Spain.  Whither  is  it  leading  us?  Are  we  travel 
ing  the  same  road? 

Let  us  hope  not.  Let  us  believe  not.  Yet,  once 
strolling  along  through  the  crypt  of  the  Church  of 
the  Escurial  near  Madrid,  I  could  not  repress  the 
idea  of  a  personal  and  physical  resemblance  be 
tween  the  effigies  in  marble  and  bronze  looking 
down  upon  me  whichever  way  I  turned,  to  some  of 
our  contemporary  public  men  and  seeming  to  say: 
"My  love  to  the  President  when  you  see  him  next," 
and  "Don't  forget  to  remember  me  kindly,  please, 
to  the  chairmen  of  both  your  national  committees  1" 


![227] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

IV 

In  a  world  of  sin,  disease  and  death — death 
inevitable — what  may  man  do  to  drive  out  sin  and 
cure  disease,  to  the  end  that,  barring  accident,  old 
age  shall  set  the  limit  on  mortal  life? 

The  quack  doctor  equally  in  ethics  and  in  physics 
has  played  a  leading  part  in  human  affairs.  Only 
within  a  relatively  brief  period  has  science  made 
serious  progress  toward  discovery.  Though  Nature 
has  perhaps  an  antidote  for  all  her  posions  many  of 
them  continue  to  defy  approach.  They  lie  con 
cealed,  leaving  the  astutest  to  grope  in  the  dark. 

That  which  is  true  of  material  things  is  truer  yet 
of  spiritual  things.  The  ideal  about  which  we  hear 
so  much,  is  as  unattained  as  the  fabled  bag  of  gold 
at  the  end  of  the  rainbow.  Nor  is  the  doctrine  of 
perfectability  anywhere  one  with  itself.  It  speaks 
in  diverse  tongues.  Its  processes  and  objects  are 
variant.  It  seems  but  an  iridescent  dream  which 
lends  itself  equally  to  the  fancies  of  the  impracti 
cable  and  the  scheming  of  the  self-seeking,  breed 
ing  visionaries  and  pretenders. 

Easily  assumed  and  asserted,  too  often  it  be 
comes  tyrannous,  dealing  with  things  outer  and 
[228] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

visible  while  taking  little  if  any  account  of  the  inner 
lights  of  the  soul.  Thus  it  imposes  upon  credulity 
and  ignorance;  makes  fakers  of  some  and  fanatics 
of  others;  in  politics  where  not  an  engine  of  op 
pression,  a  corrupt  influence ;  in  religion  where  not 
a  zealot,  a  promoter  of  cant.  In  short  the  self- 
appointed  apostle  of  uplift,  who  disregarding  in 
dividual  character  would  make  virtue  a  matter  of 
statute  law  and  ordain  uniformity  of  conduct  by 
act  of  conventicle  or  assembly,  is  likelier  to  produce 
moral  chaos  than  to  reach  the  sublime  state  he 
claims  to  seek. 

The  bare  suggestion  is  full  of  startling  possi 
bilities.  Individualism  was  the  discovery  of  the 
fathers  of  the  American  Republic.  It  is  the  bed 
rock  of  our  political  philosophy.  Human  slavery 
was  assuredly  an  indefensible  institution.  But  the 
armed  enforcement  of  freedom  did  not  make  a 
black  man  a  white  man.  Nor  will  the  wave  of 
fanaticism  seeking  to  control  the  food  and  drink 
and  dress  of  the  people  make  men  better  men. 
Danger  lurks  and  is  bound  to  come  with  the 
inevitable  reaction. 

The  levity  of  the  men  is  recruited  by  the  folly  of 
the  women.  The  leaders  of  feminism  would  abolish 

[229] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

sex.  To  what  end?  The  pessimist  answers  what 
easier  than  the  demolition  of  a  sexless  world  gone 
entirely  mad?  How  simple  the  engineries  of  de 
struction.  Civil  war  in  America;  universal  hara- 
kiri  in  Europe ;  the  dry  rot  of  wealth  wasting  itself 
in  self-indulgence.  Then  a  thousand  years  of  total 
eclipse.  Finally  Macaulay's  Australian  surveying 
the  ruins  of  St.  Paul's  Cathedral  from  a  broken 
parapet  of  London  Bridge,  and  a  Moslem  con 
queror  of  America  looking  from  the  hill  of  the 
Capitol  at  Washington  upon  the  desolation  of  what 
was  once  the  District  of  Columbia.  Shall  the  end 
be  an  Oriental  renaissance  with  the  philosophies  of 
Buddha,  Mohammed  and  Confucius  welded  into  a 
new  religion  describing  itself  as  the  last  word  of 
science,  reason  and  common  sense? 

Alas,  and  alack  the  day!  In  those  places  where 
the  suffering  rich  most  do  congregate  the  words  of 
Watts'  hymn  have  constant  application: 

For  Satan  finds  some  mischief  still 
For  idle  hands  to  do. 

When  they  have  not  gone  skylarking  or  grown 
tired  of  bridge  they  devote  their  leisure  to  organiz 
ing  clubs  other  than  those  of  the  uplift.     There 
[230] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

are  all  sorts,  from  the  Society  for  the  Abrogation 
of  Bathing  Suits  at  the  seaside  resorts  to  the 
League  at  Mewville  for  the  Care  of  Disabled  Cats. 
Most  of  these  clubs  are  all  officers  and  no  privates. 
That  is  what  many  of  them  are  got  up  for.  Do 
they  advance  the  world  in  grace?  One  who  sur 
veys  the  scene  can  scarcely  think  so. 

But  the  whirl  goes  on;  the  yachts  sweep  proudly 
out  to  sea;  the  auto  cars  dash  madly  through  the 
streets;  more  and  darker  and  deeper  do  the  con 
trasts  of  life  show  themselves.  How  long  shall  it 
be  when  the  mudsill  millions  take  the  upper  ten 
thousand  by  the  throat  and  rend  them  as  the 
furiosos  of  the  Terror  in  France  did  the  aristocrats 
of  the  Regime  Ancien?  The  issue  between  capital 
and  labor,  for  example,  is  full  of  generating  heat 
and  hate.  Who  shall  say  that,  let  loose  in  the 
crowded  centers  of  population,  it  may  not  one  day 
engulf  us  all? 

Is  this  rank  pessimism  or  merely  the  vagaries 
of  an  old  man  dropping  back  into  second  child 
hood,  who  does  not  see  that  the  world  is  wiser  and 
better  than  ever  it  was,  mankind  and  womankind, 
surely  on  the  way  to  perfection? 

[231] 


'MARSE  HENRY3 


One  thing  is  certain:  We  are  not  standing  still. 
Since  "Adam  delved  and  Eve  span" — if  they  ever 
did — in  the  Garden  of  Eden,  "somewhere  in  Asia," 
to  the  "goings  on"  in  the  Garden  of  the  Gods  di 
rectly  under  Pike's  Peak — the  earth  we  inhabit  has 
at  no  time  and  nowhere  wanted  for  liveliness — but 
surely  it  was  never  livelier  than  it  now  is;  as  the 
space-writer  says,  more  "dramatic";  indeed,  to 
quote  the  guidebooks,  quite  so  "picturesque  and 
interesting." 

Go  where  one  may,  on  land  or  sea,  he  will  come 
upon  activities  of  one  sort  and  another.  Were 
Timon  of  Athens  living,  he  might  be  awakened 
from  his  misanthrophy  and  Jacques,  the  forest 
cynic,  stirred  to  something  like  enthusiasm.  Is  the 
world  enduring  the  pangs  of  a  second  birth  which 
shall  recreate  all  things  anew,  supplementing  the 
miracles  of  modern  invention  with  a  corresponding 
development  of  spiritual  life ;  or  has  it  reached  the 
top  of  the  hill,  and,  mortal,  like  the  human  atoms 
that  compose  it,  is  it  starting  downward  on  the 
other  side  into  an  abyss  which  the  historians  of  the 
future  will  once  again  call  "the  dark  ages?" 
[232] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

We  know  not,  and  there  is  none  to  tell  us.  That 
which  is  actually  happening  were  unbelievable  if 
we  did  not  see  it,  from  hour  to  hour,  from  day  to 
day.  Horror  succeeding  horror  has  in  some  sort 
blunted  our  sensibilities.  Not  only  are  our  sym 
pathies  numbed  by  the  immensity  of  the  slaughter 
and  the  sorrow,  but  patriotism  itself  is  chilled  by  the 
selfish  thought  that,  having  thus  far  measurably  es 
caped,  we  may  pull  through  without  paying  our 
share.  This  will  account  for  a  certain  indifferent- 
ism  we  now  and  again  encounter. 

At  the  moment  we  are  felicitating  ourselves — or, 
is  it  merely  confusing  ourselves? — over  the  revolu 
tion  in  Russia.  It  seems  of  good  augury.  To  be 
gin  with,  for  Russia.  Then  the  murder  war  fairly 
won  for  the  Allies,  we  are  promised  by  the  optimists 
a  wise  and  lasting  peace. 

The  bells  that  rang  out  in  Petrograd  and  Mos 
cow  sounded,  we  are  told,  the  death  knell  of  autoc 
racy  in  Berlin  and  Vienna.  The  clarion  tones  that 
echoed  through  the  Crimea  and  Siberia,  albeit  to  the 
ear  of  the  masses  muffled  in  the  Schwarzwald  and 
along  the  shores  of  the  North  Sea,  and  up  and  down 
the  Danube  and  the  Rhine,  yet  conveyed  a  whis 
pered  message  which  may  presently  break  into 

[233] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

song;  the  glad  song  of  freedom  with  it  glorious  re 
frain:  "The  Romanoffs  gone!  Perdition  having 
reached  the  Hohenzollerns  and  the  Hapsburgs,  all 
will  be  well!" 

Anyhow,  freedom ;  self-government ;  for  whilst  a 
scrutinizing  and  solicitous  pessimism,  observing  and 
considering  many  abuses,  administrative  and 
political,  federal  and  local,  in  our  republican  system 
— abuses  which  being  very  visible  are  most  lamenta 
ble — may  sometimes  move  us  to  lose  heart  of  hope 
in  democracy,  we  know  of  none  better.  So,  let  us 
stand  by  it ;  pray  for  it ;  fight  for  it.  Let  us  by  our 
example  show  the  Russians  how  to  attain  it.  Let 
us  by  the  same  token  show  the  Germans  how  to 
attain  it  when  they  come  to  see,  if  they  ever  do, 
the  havoc  autocracy  has  made  for  Germany.  That 
should  constitute  the  bed  rock  of  our  politics  and 
our  religion.  It  is  the  true  religion.  Love  of  coun 
try  is  love  of  God.  Patriotism  is  religion. 

It  is  also  Christianity.  The  pacifist,  let  me 
parenthetically  observe,  is  scarcely  a  Christian. 
There  be  technical  Christians  and  there  be  Chris 
tians.  The  technical  Christian  sees  nothing  but  the 
blurred  letter  of  the  law,  which  he  misconstrues.  The 
[234] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Christian,  animated  by  its  holy  spirit  and  led  by  its 
rightful  interpretation,  serves  the  Lord  alike  of 
heaven  and  hosts  when  he  flies  the  flag  of  his  coun 
try  and  smites  its  enemies  hip  and  thigh  1 


[235] 


CHAPTER  THE  ELEVENTH 

ANDREW   JOHNSON — THE    LIBERAL    CONVENTION    IN 

1872 GAEL  SCHURZ THE  "QUADRILATERAL" — • 

SAM  BOWLES,  HORACE  WHITE  AND  MTJRAT  HAL- 
STEAD — A  QUEER  COMPOSITE  OF  INCONGRUITIES 


AMONG  the  many  misconceptions  and  mis 
chances  that  befell  the  slavery  agitation  in 
the  United  States  and  finally  led  a  kindred  people 
into  actual  war  the  idea  that  got  afloat  after  this 
war  that  every  Confederate  was  a  Secessionist  best 
served  the  ends  of  the  radicalism  which  sought  to 
reduce  the  South  to  a  conquered  province,  and  as 
such  to  reconstruct  it  by  hostile  legislation  sup 
ported  wherever  needed  by  force. 

Andrew  Johnson  very  well  understood  that  a 
great  majority  of  the  men  who  were  arrayed  on 
the  Southern  side  had  taken  the  field  against  their 
better  judgment  through  pressure  of  circumstance. 
They  were  Union  men  who  had  opposed  secession 
[236] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

and  clung  to  the  old  order.  Not  merely  in  the  Bor 
der  States  did  this  class  rule  but  in  the  Gulf  States 
it  held  a  respectable  minority  until  the  shot  fired 
upon  Sumter  drew  the  call  for  troops  from  Lincoln. 
The  Secession  leaders,  who  had  staked  their  all 
upon  the  hazard,  knew  that  to  save  their  move 
ment  from  collapse  it  was  necessary  that  blood  be 
sprinkled  in  the  faces  of  the  people.  Hence  the 
message  from  Charleston: 

With  cannon,  mortar  and  petard 
We  tender  you  our  Beauregard — — 

with  the  response  from  Washington  precipitating 
the  conflict  of  theories  into  a  combat  of  arms  for 
which  neither  party  was  prepared. 

The  debate  ended,  battle  at  hand,  Southern  men 
had  to  choose  between  the  North  and  the  South, 
between  their  convictions  and  predilections  on  one 
side  and  expatriation  on  the  other  side — resistance 
to  invasion,  not  secession,  the  issue.  But  four  years 
later,  when  in  1865  all  that  they  had  believed  and 
feared  in  1861  had  come  to  pass,  these  men  required 
no  drastic  measures  to  bring  them  to  terms.  Events 
more  potent  than  acts  of  Congress  had  already 
reconstructed  them.  Lincoln  with  a  forecast  of  this 

[237] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

had  shaped  his  ends  accordingly.  Johnson,  himself 
a  Southern  man,  understood  it  even  better  than 
Lincoln,  and  backed  by  the  legacy  of  Lincoln  he 
proceeded  not  very  skillfully  to  build  upon  it. 

The  assassination  of  Lincoln,  however,  had 
played  directly  into  the  hands  of  the  radicals,  led 
by  Ben  Wade  in  the  Senate  and  Thaddeus  Stevens 
in  the  House.  Prior  to  that  baleful  night  they  had 
fallen  behind  the  marching  van.  The  mad  act  of 
Booth  put  them  upon  their  feet  and  brought  them 
to  the  front.  They  were  implacable  men,  politi 
cians  equally  of  resolution  and  ability.  Events 
quickly  succeeding  favored  them  and  their  plans.  It 
was  not  alone  Johnson's  lack  of  temper  and  tact 
that  gave  them  the  whip  hand.  His  removal  from 
office  would  have  opened  the  door  of  the  White 
House  to  Wade,  so  that  strategically  Johnson's 
position  was  from  the  beginning  beleaguered  and 
came  perilously  near  before  the  close  to  being  un^ 
tenable. 

Grant,  a  political  nondescript,  not  Wade,  the  un 
compromising  extremist,  came  after;  and  inevitably 
four  years  of  Grant  had  again  divided  the  triumph 
ant  Republicans.  This  was  the  situation  during 
the  winter  of  1871-72,  when  the  approaching  Presi- 
[238] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

dential  election  brought  the  country  face  to  face 
with  a  most  extraordinary  state  of  affairs.  The 
South  was  in  irons.  The  North  was  growing 
restive.  Thinking  people  everywhere  felt  that  con 
ditions  so  anomalous  to  our  institutions  could  not 
and  should  not  endure. 

ii 

Johnson  had  made  a  bungling  attempt  to  carry 
out  the  policies  of  Lincoln  and  had  gone  down  in 
the  strife.  The  Democratic  Party  had  reached  the 
ebb  tide  of  its  disastrous  fortunes. 

It  seemed  the  merest  reactionary.  A  group  of 
influential  Republicans,  dissatisfied  for  one  cause 
and  another  with  Grant,  held  a  caucus  and  issued 
a  call  for  what  they  described  as  a  Liberal  Republi 
can  Convention  to  assemble  in  Cincinnati  May  1, 
1872. 

A  Southern  man  and  a  Confederate  soldier,  a 
Democrat  by  conviction  and  inheritance,  I  had 
been  making  in  Kentucky  an  uphill  fight  for  the 
acceptance  of  the  inevitable.  The  line  of  cleavage 
between  the  old  and  the  new  South  I  had  placed 
upon  the  last  three  amendments  to  the  Constitu 
tion,  naming  them  the  Treaty  of  Peace  between 

[239] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

the  Sections.  The  negro  must  be  invested  with  the 
rights  conferred  upon  him  by  these  amendments, 
however  mistaken  and  injudicious  the  South  might 
think  them.  The  obsolete  Black  Laws  instituted 
during  the  slave  regime  must  be  removed  from  the 
statute  books.  The  negro,  like  Mohammed's  coffin, 
swung  in  midair.  He  was  neither  fish,  flesh  nor 
fowl,  nor  good  red  herring.  For  our  own  sake  we 
must  habilitate  him,  educate  and  elevate  him,  make 
him,  if  possible,  a  contented  and  useful  citizen. 
Failing  of  this,  free  government  itself  might  be  im 
periled. 

I  had  behind  me  the  intelligence  of  the  Con 
federate  soldiers  almost  to  a  man.  They  at  least 
were  tired  of  futile  fighting,  and  to  them  the  war 
was  over.  But — and  especially  in  Kentucky — 
there  was  an  element  that  wanted  to  fight  when  it 
was  too  late;  old  Union  Democrats  and  Union 
Whigs  who  clung  to  the  hull  of  slavery  when  the 
kernel  was  gone,  and  proposed  to  win  in  politics 
what  had  been  lost  in  battle. 

The  leaders  of  this  belated  element  were  in  com 
plete  control  of  the  political  machinery  of  the  state. 
They  regarded  me  as  an  impudent  upstart — since 
I  had  come  to  Kentucky  from  Tennessee — as  little 
[240] 


From  a  Photograph  ~by  M.  B.  Brady 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN    IN    1861 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

better  than  a  carpet-bagger;  and  had  done  their 
uttermost  to  put  me  down  and  drive  me  out. 

I  was  a  young  fellow  of  two  and  thirty,  of  bound 
less  optimism  and  my  full  share  of  self-confidence, 
no  end  of  physical  endurance  and  mental  vitality, 
having  some  political  as  well  as  newspaper  experi 
ence.  It  never  crossed  my  fancy  that  I  could  fail. 

I  met  resistance  with  aggression,  answered  at 
tempts  at  bullying  with  scorn,  generally  irradiated 
by  laughter.  Yet  was  I  not  wholly  blind  to  conse 
quences  and  the  admonitions  of  prudence ;  and  when 
the  call  for  a  Liberal  Republican  Convention  ap 
peared  I  realized  that  if  I  expected  to  remain  a 
Democrat  in  a  Democratic  community,  and  to  in 
fluence  and  lead  a  Democratic  following,  I  must 
proceed  warily. 

Though  many  of  those  proposing  the  new  move 
ment  were  familiar  acquaintances — some  of  them 
personal  friends — the  scheme  was  in  the  air,  as  it 
were.  Its  three  newspaper  bellwethers — Samuel 
Bowles,  Horace  White  and  Murat  Halstead — were 
especially  well  known  to  me;  so  were  Horace 
Greeley,  Carl  Schurz  and  Charles  Sumner,  Stanley 
Matthews  being  my  kinsman,  George  Hoadley  and 
Cassius  M.  Clay  next-door  neighbors.  But  they 

[241] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

were  not  the  men  I  had  trained  with — not  my 
"crowd" — and  it  was  a  question  how  far  I  might  be 
able  to  reconcile  myself,  not  to  mention  my  political 
associates,  to  such  company,  even  conceding  that 
they  proceeded  under  good  fortune  with  a  good 
plan,  offering  the  South  extrication  from  its  woes 
and  the  Democratic  Party  an  entering  wedge  into 
a  solid  and  hitherto  irresistible  North. 

Nevertheless,  I  resolved  to  go  a  little  in  advance 
to  Cincinnati,  to  have  a  look  at  the  stalking  horse 
there  to  be  displayed,  free  to  take  it  or  leave  it  as  I 
liked,  my  bridges  and  lines  of  communication  quite 
open  and  intact. 

m 

A  livelier  and  more  variegated  omnium-gatherum 
was  never  assembled.  They  had  already  begun  to 
straggle  in  when  I  arrived.  There  were  long-haired 
and  spectacled  doctrinaires  from  New  England, 
spliced  by  short-haired  and  stumpy  emissaries  from 
New  York — mostly  friends  of  Horace  Greeley,  as 
it  turned  out.  There  were  brisk  Westerners  from 
Chicago  and  St.  Louis.  If  Whitelaw  Reid,  who 
had  come  as  Greeley's  personal  representative,  had 
his  retinue,  so  had  Horace  White  and  Carl  Schurz. 
[242] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

There  were  a  few  rather  overdressed  persons  from 
New  Orleans  brought  up  by  Governor  Warmouth, 
and  a  motely  array  of  Southerners  of  every  sort, 
who  were  ready  to  clutch  at  any  straw  that  promised 
relief  to  intolerable  conditions.  The  full  contingent 
of  Washington  correspondents  was  there,  of  course, 
with  sharpened  eyes  and  pens  to  make  the  most 
of  what  they  had  already  begun  to  christen  a  con 
clave  of  cranks. 

Bowles  and  Halstead  met  me  at  the  station,  and 
we  drove  to  the  St.  Nicholas  Hotel,  where  Schurz 
and  White  were  awaiting  us.  Then  and  there  was 
organized  a  fellowship  which  in  the  succeeding 
campaign  cut  a  considerable  figure  and  went  by 
the  name  of  the  Quadrilateral.  We  resolved  to 
limit  the  Presidential  nominations  of  the  convention 
to  Charles  Francis  Adams,  Bowies'  candidate,  and 
Lyman  Trumbull,  White's  candidate,  omitting  al 
together,  because  of  specific  reasons  urged  by 
White,  the  candidacy  of  B.  Gratz  Brown,  who  be 
cause  of  his  Kentucky  connections  had  better  suited 
my  purpose. 

The  very  next  day  the  secret  was  abroad,  and 
Whitelaw  Reid  came  to  me  to  ask  why  in  a  news- 

[243] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

paper  combine  of  this  sort  the  New  York  Tribune 
had  been  left  out. 

To  my  mind  it  seemed  preposterous  that  it  had 
been  or  should  be,  and  I  stated  as  much  to  my  new 
colleagues.  They  offered  objection  which  to  me 
appeared  perverse  if  not  childish.  They  did  not 
like  Reid,  to  begin  with.  He  was  not  a  principal 
like  the  rest  of  us,  but  a  subordinate.  Greeley 
was  this,  that  and  the  other.  He  could  never  be 
relied  upon  in  any  coherent  practical  plan  of  cam 
paign.  To  talk  about  him  as  a  candidate  was 
ridiculous. 

I  listened  rather  impatiently  and  finally  I  said: 
"Now,  gentlemen,  in  this  movement  we  shall  need 
the  New  York  Tribune.  If  we  admit  Reid  we 
clinch  it.  You  will  all  agree  that  Greeley  has  no 
chance  of  a  nomination,  and  so  by  taking  him  in 
we  both  eat  our  cake  and  have  it." 

On  this  view  of  the  case  Reid  was  invited  to  join 
us,  and  that  very  night  he  sat  with  us  at  the  St. 
Nicholas,  where  from  night  to  night  until  the  end 
we  convened  and  went  over  the  performances  and 
developments  of  the  day  and  concerted  plans  for 
the  morrow. 
[244] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

As  I  recall  these  symposiums  some  amusing  and 
some  plaintive  memories  rise  before  me. 

The  first  serious  business  that  engaged  us  was  the 
killing  of  the  boom  for  Judge  David  Davis,  of  the 
Supreme  Court,  which  was  assuming  definite  and 
formidable  proportions.  The  preceding  winter  it 
had  been  incubating  at  Washington  under  the 
ministration  of  some  of  the  most  astute  politicians 
of  the  time,  mainly,  however,  Democratic  members 
of  Congress. 

A  party  of  these  had  brought  it  to  Cincinnati, 
opening  headquarters  well  provided  with  the 
requisite  commissaries.  Every  delegate  who  came 
in  that  could  be  reached  was  laid  hold  of  and  con 
ducted  to  Davis'  headquarters. 

We  considered  it  flat  burglary.  It  was  a  gross 
infringement  upon  our  copyrights.  What  business 
had  the  professional  politicians  with  a  great  reform 
movement?  The  influence  and  dignity  of  journal 
ism  were  at  stake.  The  press  was  imperilled.  We, 
its  custodians,  could  brook  no  such  deflection,  not 
to  say  defiance,  from  intermeddling  office  seekers, 
especially  from  broken-down  Democratic  office 
seekers. 

The  inner  sanctuary  of  our  proceedings  was  a 

[245] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

common  drawing-room  between  two  bedchambers, 
occupied  by  Schurz  and  myself.  Here  we  repaired 
after  supper  to  smoke  the  pipe  of  fraternity  and 
reform,  and  to  save  the  country.  What  might  be 
done  to  kill  off  "D.  Davis,"  as  we  irreverently  called 
the  eminent  and  learned  jurist,  the  friend  of  Lin 
coln  and  the  only  aspirant  having  a  "bar'l"?  That 
was  the  question.  We  addressed  ourselves  to  the 
task  with  earnest  purpose,  but  characteristically. 
The  power  of  the  press  must  be  invoked.  It  was 
our  chief  if  not  our  only  weapon.  Seated  at  the 
same  table  each  of  us  indited  a  leading  editorial  for 
his  paper,  to  be  wired  to  its  destination  and  printed 
next  morning,  striking  D.  Davis  at  a  prearranged 
and  varying  angle.  Copies  of  these  were  made  for 
Halstead,  who  having  with  the  rest  of  us  read  and 
compared  the  different  scrolls  indited  one  of  his 
own  in  general  commentation  and  review  for  Cin 
cinnati  consumption.  In  next  day's  Commercial, 
blazing  under  vivid  headlines,  these  leading  edito 
rials,  dated  "Chicago"  and  "New  York,"  "Spring 
field,  Mass.,"  and  "Louisville,  Ky.,"  appeared  with 
the  explaining  line  "The  Tribune  of  to-morrow 

morning  will  say "    "The  Courier-Journal" — 

[246] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

and  the  Republican — will  say  to-morrow  morn 
ing " 

Wondrous  consensus  of  public  opinion!  The 
Davis  boom  went  down  before  it.  The  Davis  boom 
ers  were  paralyzed.  The  earth  seemed  to  have 
risen  and  hit  them  midships.  The  incoming  dele 
gates  were  arrested  and  forewarned.  Six  months 
of  adroit  scheming  was  set  at  naught,  and  little 
more  was  heard  of  "D.  Davis." 

We  were,  like  the  Mousquetaires,  equally  in  for 
fighting  and  foot-racing,  the  point  with  us  being  to 
get  there,  no  matter  how;  the  end — the  defeat  of 
the  rascally  machine  politicians  and  the  reform  of 
the  public  service — justifying  the  means.  I  am 
writing  this  nearly  fifty  years  after  the  event  and 
must  be  forgiven  the  fling  of  my  wisdom  at  my  own 
expense  and  that  of  my  associates  in  harmless 
crime. 

Some  ten  years  ago  I  wrote:  "Reid  and  White 
and  I  the  sole  survivors ;  Reid  a  great  Ambassador, 
White  and  I  the  virtuous  ones,  still  able  to  sit  up 
and  take  notice,  with  three  meals  a  day  for  which 
we  are  thankful  and  able  to  pay;  no  one  of  us 
recalcitrant.  We  were  wholly  serious — maybe  a 
trifle  visionary,  but  as  upright  and  patriotic  in  our 

[247] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

intentions  and  as  loyal  to  our  engagements  as  it 
was  possible  for  older  and  maybe  better  men  to  be. 
For  my  part  I  must  say  that  if  I  have  never  any 
thing  on  my  conscience  worse  than  the  massacre  of 
that  not  very  edifying  yet  promising  combine  I 
shall  be  troubled  by  no  remorse,  but  to  the  end  shall 
sleep  soundly  and  well." 

Alas,  I  am  not  the  sole  survivor.  In  this  con 
nection  an  amusing  incident  throwing  some  light 
upon  the  period  thrusts  itself  upon  my  memory. 
The  Quadrilateral,  including  Reid,  had  just  fin 
ished  its  consolidation  of  public  opinion  before  re 
lated,  when  the  cards  of  Judge  Craddock,  chair 
man  of  the  Kentucky  Democratic  Committee,  and 
of  Col.  Stoddard  Johnston,  editor  of  the  Frank 
fort  Yeoman,  the  organ  of  the  Kentucky  Democ 
racy,  were  brought  from  below.  They  had  come 
to  look  after  me — that  was  evident.  By  no  chance 
could  they  find  me  in  more  equivocal  company. 
In  addition  to  ourselves — bad  enough,  from  the 
Kentucky  point  of  view — Theodore  Tilton,  Donn 
Piatt  and  David  A.  Wells  were  in  the  room. 

When  the  Kentuckians  crossed  the  threshold  and 
were  presented  seriatim  the  face  of  each  was  a 
study.  Even  a  proper  and  immediate  applica- 
[248] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

tion  of  whisky  and  water  did  not  suffice  to  restore 
their  lost  equilibrium  and  bring  them  to  their  usual 
state  of  convivial  self-possession.  Colonel  John 
ston  told  me  years  after  that  when  they  went  away 
they  walked  in  silence  a  block  or  two,  when  the  old 
judge,  a  model  of  the  learned  and  sedate  school  of 
Kentucky  politicians  and  jurists,  turned  to  him  and 
said:  "It  is  no  use,  Stoddart,  we  cannot  keep  up 
with  that  young  man  or  with  these  times.  'Lord, 
now  lettest  thou  thy  servant  depart  in  peace!' " 

IV 

The  Jupiter  Tonans  of  reform  in  attendance 
upon  the  convention  was  Col.  Alexander  K.  Mc- 
Clure.  He  was  one  of  the  handsomest  and  most 
imposing  of  men;  Halstead  himself  scarcely  more 
so.  McClure  was  personally  unknown  to  the 
Quadrilateral.  But  this  did  not  stand  in  the  way 
of  our  asking  him  to  dine  with  us  as  soon  as  his 
claims  to  fellowship  in  the  good  cause  of  reform  be 
gan  to  make  themselves  apparent  through  the  need 
of  bringing  the  Pennsylvania  delegation  to  a 
realizing  sense. 

He  looked  like  a  god  as  he  entered  the  room; 
nay,  lie  acted  like  one.  Schurz  first  took  him  in 

[249] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

hand.  With  a  lofty  courtesy  I  have  never  seen 
equalled  he  tossed  his  inquisitor  into  the  air.  Hal- 
stead  came  next,  and  tried  him  upon  another  tack. 
He  fared  no  better  than  Schurz.  And  hurrying  to 
the  rescue  of  my  friends,  McClure,  looking  now  a 
bit  bored  and  resentful,  landed  me  somewhere  near 
the  ceiling. 

It  would  have  been  laughable  if  it  had  not  been 
ignominious.  I  took  my  discomfiture  with  the  bad 
grace  of  silence  throughout  the  stiff,  formal  and 
brief  meal  which  was  then  announced.  But  when 
it  was  over  and  the  party,  risen  from  table,  was 
about  to  disperse  I  collected  my  energies  and  re 
sources  for  a  final  stroke.  I  was  not  willing  to  re 
main  so  crushed  nor  to  confess  myself  so  beaten, 
though  I  could  not  disguise  from  myself  a  feeling 
that  all  of  us  had  been  overmatched. 

"McClure,"  said  I  with  the  cool  and  quiet  resolu 
tion  of  despair,  drawing  him  aside,  "what  in  the 
do  you  want  anyhow?" 

He  looked  at  me  with  swift  intelligence  and  a 
sudden  show  of  sympathy,  and  then  over  at  the 
others  with  a  withering  glance. 

"What?    With  those  cranks?    Nothing." 

Jupiter  descended  to  earth.     I  am  afraid  we 
[250] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

actually  took  a  glass  of  wine  together.  Anyhow, 
from  that  moment  to  the  hour  of  his  death  we  were 
the  best  of  friends. 

Without  the  inner  circle  of  the  Quadrilateral, 
which  had  taken  matters  into  their  own  hands,  were 
a  number  of  persons,  some  of  them  disinterested  and 
others  simple  curiosity  and  excitement  seekers,  who 
might  be  described  as  merely  lookers-on  in  Vienna. 
The  Sunday  afternoon  before  the  convention  was 
to  meet  we,  the  self -elect,  fell  in  with  a  party  of 
these  in  a  garden  "over  the  Rhine,"  as  the  German 
quarter  of  Cincinnati  is  called.  There  was  first 
general  and  rather  aimless  talk.  Then  came  a  great 
deal  of  speech  making.  Schurz  started  it  with  a 
few  pungent  observations  intended  to  suggest  and 
inspire  some  common  ground  of  opinion  and  sen 
timent.  Nobody  was  inclined  to  dispute  his  lead 
ership,  but  everybody  was  prone  to  assert  his  own. 
It  turned  out  that  each  regarded  himself  and 
wished  to  be  regarded  as  a  man  with  a  mission,  hav 
ing  a  clear  idea  how  things  were  not  to  be  done. 
There  were  Civil  Service  Reform  Protectionists 
and  Civil  Service  Reform  Free  Traders.  There 
were  a  few  politicians,  who  were  discovered  to  be 

[251] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

spoilsmen,  the  unforgivable  sin,  and  quickly  dis 
missed  as  such. 

Coherence  was  the  missing  ingredient.  Not  a 
man  jack  of  them  was  willing  to  commit  or  bind 
himself  to  anything.  Edward  Atkinson  pulled  one 
way  and  William  Dorsheimer  exactly  the  opposite 
way.  David  A.  Wells  sought  to  get  the  two  to 
gether;  it  was  not  possible.  Sam  Bowles  shook  his 
head  in  diplomatic  warning.  Horace  White  threw 
in  a  chunk  or  so  of  a  rather  agitating  newspaper  in 
dependency,  and  Halstead  was  in  an  inflamed  state 
of  jocosity  to  the  more  serious-minded. 

It  was  nuts  to  the  Washington  Correspondents 
' — story  writers  and  satirists  who  were  there  to  make 
the  most  out  of  an  occasion  in  which  the  bizarre  was 
much  in  excess  of  the  conventional — with  George 
Alfred  Townsend  and  Donn  Piatt  to  set  the  pace. 
Hyde  had  come  from  St.  Louis  to  keep  especial 
tab  on  .Grosvenor.  Though  rival  editors  facing  our 
way,  they  had  not  been  admitted  to  the  Quad 
rilateral.  McCullagh  and  Nixon  arrived  with  the 
earliest  from  Chicago.  The  lesser  lights  of  the 
guild  were  innumerable.  One  might  have  mistaken 
it  for  an  annual  meeting  of  the  Associated  Press. 

[252] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 


v 


The  convention  assembled.  It  was  in  Cincinnati's 
great  Music  Hall.  Schurz  presided.  Who  that 
was  there  will  ever  forget  his  opening  words: 
''This  is  moving  day."  He  was  just  turned  forty- 
two;  in  his  physiognomy  a  scholarly  Herr  Doktor; 
in  his  trim  lithe  figure  a  graceful  athlete;  in  the 
tones  of  his  voice  an  orator. 

Even  the  bespectacled  doctrinaires  of  the  East, 
whence,  since  the  days  when  the  Star  of  Bethlehem 
shone  over  the  desert,  wisdom  and  wise  men  have 
had  their  emanation,  were  moved  to  something  like 
enthusiasm.  The  rest  of  us  were  fervid  and  aglow. 
Two  days  and  a  night  and  a  half  the  Quadri 
lateral  had  the  world  in  a  sling  and  things  its  own 
way.  It  had  been  agreed,  as  I  have  said,  to  limit 
the  field  to  Adams,  Trumbull  and  Greeley;  Greeley 
being  out  of  it,  as  having  no  chance,  still  further 
abridged  it  to  Adams  and  Trumbull;  and,  Trum 
bull  not  developing  very  strong,  Bowles,  Halstead 
and  I,  even  White,  began  to  be  sure  of  Adams  on 
the  first  ballot;  Adams  the  indifferent,  who  had 
sailed  away  for  Europe,  observing  that  he  was  not 

[253] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

a  candidate  for  the  nomination  and  otherwise  inti 
mating  his  disdain  of  us  and  it. 

Matters  thus  apparently  cocked  and  primed,  the 
convention  adjourned  over  the  first  night  of  its 
session  with  everybody  happy  except  the  D.  Davis 
contingent,  which  lingered  on  the  scene,  but  knew 
its  "cake  was  dough."  If  we  had  forced  a  vote 
that  night,  as  we  might  have  done,  we  should  have 
nominated  Adams.  But  inspired  by  the  bravery 
of  youth  and  inexperience  we  let  the  golden  oppor 
tunity  slip.  The  throng  of  delegates  and  the  audi 
ence  dispersed. 

In  those  days,  it  being  the  business  of  my  life  to 
turn  day  into  night  and  night  into  day,  it  was  not 
my  habit  to  seek  my  bed  much  before  the  presses 
began  to  thunder  below,  and  this  night  proving  no 
exception,  and  being  tempted  by  a  party  of  Ken- 
tuckians,  who  had  come,  some  to  back  me  and  some 
to  watch  me,  I  did  not  quit  their  agreeable  society 
until  the  "wee  short  hours  ayont  the  twal."  Be 
fore  turning  in  I  glanced  at  the  early  edition  of 
the  Commercial,  to  see  that  something — I  was  too 
tired  to  decipher  precisely  what — had  happened.  It 
was,  in  point  of  fact,  the  arrival  about  midnight  of 
[254] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Gen.  Frank  P.  Blair  and  Governor  B.  Gratz 
Brown. 

I  had  in  my  possession  documents  that  would 
have  induced  at  least  one  of  them  to  pause  before 
making  himself  too  conspicuous.  The  Quadri 
lateral,  excepting  Reid,  knew  this.  We  had  sepa 
rated  upon  the  adjournment  of  the  convention.  I 
heing  across  the  river  in  Covington,  their  search 
was  unavailing.  I  was  not  to  be  found.  They  were 
in  despair.  When  having  had  a  few  hours  of  rest  I 
reached  the  convention  hall  toward  noon  it  was  too 
late. 

I  got  into  the  thick  of  it  in  time  to  see  the  close, 
not  without  an  angry  collision  with  that  one  of  the 
newly  arrived  actors  whose  coming  had  changed 
the  course  of  events,  with  whom  I  had  lifelong  rela 
tions  of  affectionate  intimacy.  Sailing  but  the 
other  day  through  Mediterranean  waters  with 
Joseph  Pulitzer,  who,  then  a  mere  youth,  was  yet 
the  secretary  of  the  convention,  he  recalled  the 
scene;  the  unexpected  and  not  overattractive  ap 
pearance  of  the  governor  of  Missouri ;  his  not  very 
pleasing  yet  ingenious  speech;  the  stoical,  almost 
lethargic  indifference  of  Schurz. 

"Carl  Schurz,"  said  Pulitzer,  "was  the  most  in- 

[255] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

dustrious  and  the  least  energetic  man  I  have  ever 
worked  with.  A  word  from  him  at  that  crisis  would 
have  completely  routed  Blair  and  squelched  Brown. 
It  was  simply  not  in  him  to  speak  it." 

Greeley  was  nominated  amid  a  whirl  of  en 
thusiasm,  his  workers,  with  Whitelaw  Reid  at  their 
head,  having  maintained  an  admirable  and  effective 
organization  and  being  thoroughly  prepared  to  take 
advantage  of  the  opportune  moment.  It  was  the 
logic  of  the  event  that  B.  Gratz  Brown  should  be 
placed  on  the  ticket  with  him. 

The  Quadrilateral  was  nowhere.  It  was  done 
for.  The  impossible  had  come  to  pass.  There  rose 
thereafter  a  friendly  issue  of  veracity  between 
Schurz  and  myself,  which  illustrates  our  state  of 
mind.  My  version  is  that  we  left  the  convention 
hall  together  with  an  immaterial  train  of  after  in 
cidents,  his  that  we  had  not  met  after  the  adjourn 
ment — he  quite  sure  of  this  because  he  had  looked 
for  me  in  vain. 

"Schurz  was  right,"  said  Joseph  Pulitzer  upon 
the  occasion  of  our  yachting  cruise  just  mentioned, 
"I  know,  for  he  and  I  went  directly  from  the  hall 
with  Judge  Stallo  to  his  home  on  Walnut  Hills, 
where  we  dined  and  passed  the  afternoon." 
[256] 


From  a  Photograph  by  M.  B.  Brady 


MRS.   LINCOLN   IX    1861 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

The  Quadrilateral  had  been  knocked  into  a 
cocked  hat.  Whitelaw  Reid  was  the  only  one  of  us 
who  clearly  understood  the  situation  and  thorough 
ly  knew  what  he  was  about.  He  came  to  me  and 
said:  "I  have  won,  and  you  people  have  lost.  I 
shall  expect  that  you  stand  by  the  agreement  and 
meet  me  as  my  guests  at  dinner  to-night.  But  if 
you  do  not  personally  look  after  this  the  others  will 
not  be  there." 

I  was  as  badly  hurt  as  any,  but  a  bond  is  a  bond 
and  I  did  as  he  desired,  succeeding  partly  by  coax 
ing  and  partly  by  insisting,  though  it  was  devious 
work. 

Frostier  conviviality  I  have  never  sat  down  to 
than  Reid's  dinner.  Horace  White  looked  more 
than  ever  like  an  iceberg,  Sam  Bowles  was  diplo 
matic  but  ineffusive,  Schurz  was  as  a  death's  head 
at  the  board ;  Halstead  and  I  through  sheer  bravado 
tried  to  enliven  the  feast.  But  they  would  none 
of  us,  nor  it,  and  we  separated  early  and  sadly,  re 
formers  hoist  by  their  own  petard. 

VI 

The  reception  by  the  country  of  the  nomination 
of  Horace  .Greeley  was  as  inexplicable  to  the  poli- 

[257] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

ticians  as  the  nomination  itself  had  been  un 
expected  by  the  Quadrilateral.  The  people  rose  to 
it.  The  sentimental,  the  fantastic  and  the  para 
doxical  in  human  nature  had  to  do  with  this.  At 
the  South  an  ebullition  of  pleased  surprise  grew  into 
positive  enthusiasm.  Peace  was  the  need  if  not  the 
longing  of  the  Southern  heart,  and  Greeley's  had 
been  the  first  hand  stretched  out  to  the  South  from 
the  enemy's  camp — very  bravely,  too,  for  he  had 
signed  the  bail  bond  of  Jefferson  Davis — and  quick 
upon  the  news  flashed  the  response  from  generous 
men  eager  for  the  chance  to  pay  something  upon  a 
recognized  debt  of  gratitude. 

Except  for  this  spontaneous  uprising,  which 
continued  unabated  in  July,  the  Democratic  Party 
could  not  have  been  induced  at  Baltimore  to  ratify 
the  proceedings  at  Cincinnati  and  formally  to  make 
Greeley  its  candidate.  The  leaders  dared  not  resist 
it.  Some  of  them  halted,  a  few  held  out,  but  by 
midsummer  the  great  body  of  them  came  to  the 
front  to  head  the  procession. 

He  was  a  queer  old  man;  a  very  medley  of  con 
tradictions  ;  shrewd  and  simple ;  credulous  and  pene 
trating;  a  master  penman  of  the  school  of  Swift  and 
Cobbett;  even  in  his  odd  picturesque  personality 
[258] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

whimsically  attractive ;  a  man  to  be  reckoned  with 
where  he  chose  to  put  his  powers  forth,  as  Seward 
learned  to  his  cost. 

What  he  would  have  done  with  the  Presidency 
had  he  reached  it  is  not  easy  to  say  or  surmise.  He 
was  altogether  unsuited  for  official  life,  for  which 
nevertheless  he  had  a  passion.  But  he  was  not  so 
readily  deceived  in  men  or  misled  in  measures  as  lie 
seemed  and  as  most  people  thought  him. 

His  convictions  were  emotional,  his  philosophy 
was  experimental;  but  there  was  a  certain  method 
in  their  application  to  public  affairs.  He  gave 
bountifully  of  his  affection  and  his  confidence  to 
the  few  who  enjoyed  his  familiar  friendship — ac 
cessible  and  sympathetic  though  not  indiscriminat- 
ing  to  those  who  appealed  to  his  impressionable 
sensibilities  and  sought  his  help.  He  had  been  a 
good  party  man  and  was  by  nature  and  tempera 
ment  a  partisan. 

To  him  place  was  not  a  badge  of  servitude ;  it  was 
a  decoration — preferment,  promotion,  popular 
recognition.  He  had  always  yearned  for  office  as 
the  legitimate  destination  of  public  life  and  the 
honorable  award  of  party  service.  During  the 
greater  part  of  his  career  the  conditions  of  jour- 

[259] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

nalism  had  been  rather  squalid  and  servile.  He 
was  really  great  as  a  journalist.  He  was  truly  and 
highly  fit  for  nothing  else,  but  seeing  less  deserving 
and  less  capable  men  about  him  advanced  from  one 
post  of  distinction  to  another  he  wondered  why  his 
turn  proved  so  tardy  in  coming,  and  when  it  would 
come.  It  did  come  with  a  rush.  What  more  natural 
than  that  he  should  believe  it  real  instead  of  the 
empty  pageant  of  a  vision? 

It  had  taken  me  but  a  day  and  a  night  to  pull 
myself  together  after  the  first  shock  and  surprise 
and  to  plunge  into  the  swim  to  help  fetch  the  water 
logged  factions  ashore.  This  was  clearly  indis 
pensable  to  forcing  the  Democratic  organization  to 
come  to  the  rescue  of  what  would  have  been  other 
wise  but  a  derelict  upon  a  stormy  sea.  Schurz  was 
deeply  disgruntled.  Before  he  could  be  appeased 
a  bridge,  found  in  what  was  called  the  Fifth  Avenue 
Hotel  Conference,  had  to  be  constructed  in  order  to 
carry  him  across  the  stream  which  flowed  between 
his  disappointed  hopes  and  aims  and  what  appeared 
to  him  an  illogical  and  repulsive  alternative.  He 
had  taken  to  his  tent  and  sulked  like  another 
Achilles.  He  was  harder  to  deal  with  than  any  of 
[260] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

the  Democratic  file  leaders,  but  he  finally  yielded 
and  did  splendid  work  in  the  campaign. 

His  was  a  stubborn  spirit  not  readily  adjustable. 
He  was  a  nobly  gifted  man,  but  from  first  to  last  an 
alien  in  an  alien  land.  He  once  said  to  me,  "If  I 
should  live  a  thousand  years  they  would  still  call 
me  a  Dutchman."  No  man  of  his  time  spoke  so 
well  or  wrote  to  better  purpose.  He  was  equally 
skillful  in  debate,  an  overmatch  for  Conkling  and 
Morton,  whom — especially  in  the  French  arms  mat 
ter — he  completely  dominated  and  outshone.  As 
sincere  and  unselfish,  as  patriotic  and  as  courageous 
as  any  of  his  contemporaries,  he  could  never  attain 
the  full  measure  of  the  popular  heart  and  confi 
dence,  albeit  reaching  its  understanding  directly 
and  surely;  within  himself  a  man  of  sentiment  who 
was  not  the  cause  of  sentiment  in  others.  He  knew 
this  and  felt  it. 

The  Nast  cartoons,  which  as  to  Greeley  and 
Sumner  were  unsparing  in  the  last  degree,  whilst 
treating  Schurz  with  a  kind  of  considerate  qualify 
ing  humor,  nevertheless  greatly  offended  him.  I 
do  not  think  Greeley  minded  them  much  if  at  all. 
They  were  very  effective;  notably  the  "Pirate 
Ship,"  which  represented  Greeley  leaning  over  the 

[261] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

taffrail  of  a  vessel  carrying  the  Stars  and  Stripes 
and  waving  his  handkerchief  at ,  the  man-of-war 
Uncle  Sam  in  the  distance,  the  political  leaders  of 
the  Confederacy  dressed  in  true  corsair  costume 
crouched  below  ready  to  spring.  Nothing  did  more 
to  sectionalize  Northern  opinion  and  fire  the  North 
ern  heart,  and  to  lash  the  fury  of  the  rank  and  file 
of  those  who  were  urged  to  vote  as  they  had  shot 
and  who  had  hoisted  above  them  the  Bloody  Shirt 
for  a  banner.  The  first  half  of  the  canvass  the 
bulge  was  with  Greeley;  the  second  half  began  in 
eclipse,  to  end  in  something  very  like  collapse. 

The  old  man  seized  his  flag  and  set  out  upon  his 
own  account  for  a  tour  of  the  country.  Right  well 
he  bore  himself.  If  speech-making  ever  does  any 
good  toward  the  shaping  of  results  Greeley's 
speeches  surely  should  have  elected  him.  They  were 
marvels  of  impromptu  oratory,  mostly  homely  and 
touching  appeals  to  the  better  sense  and  the 
magnanimity  of  a  people  not  ripe  or  ready  for  gen 
erous  impressions;  convincing  in  their  simplicity 
and  integrity;  unanswerable  from  any  standpoint 
of  sagacious  statesmanship  or  true  patriotism  if  the 
North  had  been  in  any  mood  to  listen  and  to  reason. 

I  met  him  at  Cincinnati  and  acted  as  his  escort  to 
[262] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Louisville  and  thence  to  Indianapolis,  where  others 
were  waiting  to  take  him  in  charge.  He  was  in  a 
state  of  querulous  excitement.  Before  the  vast  and 
noisy  audiences  which  we  faced  he  stood  apparently 
pleased  and  composed,  delivering  his  words  as  he 
might  have  dictated  them  to  a  stenographer.  As 
soon  as  we  were  alone  he  would  break  out  into  a 
kind  of  lamentation,  punctuated  by  occasional 
bursts  of  objurgation.  He  especially  distrusted  the 
Quadrilateral,  making  an  exception  in  my  case,  as 
well  he  might,  because  however  his  nomination  had 
jarred  my  judgment  I  had  a  real  affection  for  him, 
dating  back  to  the  years  immediately  preceding  the 
war  when  I  was  wont  to  encounter  him  in  the  re 
porters'  galleries  at  Washington,  which  he  pre 
ferred  to  using  his  floor  privilege  as  an  ex-member 
of  Congress. 

It  was  mid-October.  We  had  heard  from  Maine ; 
Indiana  and  Ohio  had  voted.  He  was  for  the  first 
time  realizing  the  hopeless  nature  of  the  contest. 
The  South  in  irons  and  under  military  rule  and 
martial  law  sure  for  Grant,  there  had  never  been 
any  real  chance.  Now  it  was  obvious  that  there 
was  to  be  no  compensating  ground  swell  at  the 
North.  That  he  should  pour  forth  his  chagrin  to 

[263] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

one  whom  he  knew  so  well  and  even  regarded  as 
one  of  his  boys  was  inevitable.  Much  of  what  he 
said  was  founded  on  a  basis  of  fact,  some  of  it  was 
mere  suspicion  and  surmise,  all  of  it  came  back  to 
the  main  point  that  defeat  stared  us  in  the  face. 
I  was  glad  and  yet  loath  to  part  with  him.  If  ever 
a  man  needed  a  strong  friendly  hand  and  heart  to 
lean  upon  he  did  during  those  dark  days — the  end 
in  darkest  night  nearer  than  anyone  could  divine. 
He  showed  stronger  mettle  than  had  been  allowed 
him;  bore  a  manlier  part  than  was  commonly  as 
cribed  to  the  slovenly  slipshod  habiliments  and  the 
aspects  in  which  benignancy  and  vacillation  seemed 
to  struggle  for  the  ascendancy.  Abroad  the  ele 
ments  conspired  against  him.  At  home  his  wife 
lay  ill,  as  it  proved,  unto  death.  The  good  gray 
head  he  still  carried  like  a  hero,  but  the  worn  and 
tender  heart  was  beginning  to  break.  Overwhelm 
ing  defeat  was  followed  by  overwhelming  affliction. 
He  never  quitted  his  dear  one's  beside  until  the 
last  pulsebeat,  and  then  he  sank  beneath  the  load 
of  grief. 

"The  Tribune  is  gone  and  I  am  gone,"  he  said, 
and  spoke  no  more. 

The  death  of  Greeley  fell  upon  the  country  with 
[264] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

a  sudden  shock.  It  roused  a  universal  sense  of  pity 
and  sorrow  and  awe.  All  hearts  were  hushed.  In 
an  instant  the  bitterness  of  the  campaign  was  for 
gotten,  though  the  huzzas  of  the  victors  still  rent 
the  air.  The  President,  his  late  antagonist,  with  his 
cabinet  and  the  leading  members  of  the  two  Houses 
of  Congress,  attended  his  funeral.  As  he  lay  in  his 
coffin  he  was  no  longer  the  arch  rebel,  leading  a  com 
bine  of  buccaneers  and  insurgents,  which  the  Re 
publican  orators  and  newspapers  had  depicted 
him,  but  the  brave  old  apostle  of  freedom  who  had 
done  more  than  all  others  to  make  the  issues  upon 
which  a  militant  and  triumphant  party  had  risen 
to  power. 

The  multitude  remembered  only  the  old  white 
hat  and  the  sweet  old  baby  face  beneath  it,  heart 
of  gold,  and  hand  wielding  the  wizard  pen;  the  in 
carnation  of  probity  and  kindness,  of  steadfast  de 
votion  to  his  duty  as  he  saw  it,  and  to  the  needs  of 
the  whole  human  family.  A  tragedy  in  truth  it  was ; 
and  yet  as  his  body  was  lowered  into  its  grave  there 
rose  above  it,  invisible,  unnoted,  a  flower  of  match 
less  beauty — the  flower  of  peace  and  love  between 
the  sections  of  the  Union  to  which  his  life  had  been 
a  sacrifice. 

[265] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

The  crank  convention  had  builded  wiser  than  it 
knew.  That  the  Democratic  Party  could  ever  have 
been  brought  to  the  support  of  Horace  Greeley  for 
President  of  the  United  States  reads  even  now  like 
a  page  out  of  a  nonsense  book.  That  his  warmest 
support  should  have  come  from  the  South  seems 
incredible  and  was  a  priceless  fact.  His  martyrdom 
shortened  the  distance  across  the  bloody  chasm ;  his 
coffin  very  nearly  filled  it.  The  candidacy  of 
Charles  Francis  Adams  or  of  Lyman  Trumbull 
meant  a  mathematical  formula,  with  no  solution  of 
the  problem  and  as  certain  defeat  at  the  end  of  it. 
His  candidacy  threw  a  flood  of  light  and  warmth 
into  the  arena  of  deadly  strife ;  it  made  a  more  equal 
and  reasonable  division  of  parties  possible;  it  put 
the  Southern  half  of  the  country  in  a  position  to 
plead  its  own  case  by  showing  the  Northern  half 
that  it  was  not  wholly  recalcitrant  or  reactionary; 
and  it  made  way  for  real  issues  of  pith  and  moment 
relating  to  the  time  instead  of  pigments  of  bellicose 
passion  and  scraps  of  ante-bellum  controversy. 

In  a  word  Greeley  did  more  by  his  death  to  com 
plete  the  work  of  Lincoln  than  he  could  have  done 
by  a  triumph  at  the  polls  and  the  term  in  the  White 
House  he  so  much  desired.  Though  but  sixty-one 
[266] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

years  of  age,  his  race  was  run.  Of  him  it  may  be 
truly  written  that  he  lived  a  life  full  of  inspiration 
to  his  countrymen  and  died  not  in  vain,  "our  later 
Franklin"  fittingly  inscribed  upon  his  tomb. 


r[267] 


CHAPTER  THE  TWELFTH 

THE  IDEAL  IN  PUBLIC  LIFE — POLITICIANS,  STATES 
MEN  AND  PHILOSOPHERS THE  DISPUTED  PRESI 
DENCY  IN  1876-7 THE  PERSONALITY  AND 

CHARACTER  OF  MR.  TILDEN HIS  ELECTION  AND 

EXCLUSION  BY  A  PARTISAN  TRIBUNAL 


THE  soul  of  journalism  is   disinterestedness. 
But  neither  as  a  principle  nor  an  asset  had 
this  been  generally  discovered  fifty  years  ago.  Most 
of  my  younger  life  I  was  accused  of  ulterior  motives 
of  political  ambition,  whereas  I  had  seen  too  much 
of  preferment  not  to  abhor  it.     To  me,  as  to  my 
father,  office  has  seemed  ever  a  badge  of  servitude. 
For  a  long  time,  indeed,  I  nursed  the  delusions  of 
the  ideal.    The  love  of  the  ideal  has  not  in  my  old 
age  quite  deserted  me.    But  I  have  seen  the  claim 
of  it  so  much  abused  that  when  a  public  man  calls 
it  for  a  witness  I  begin  to  suspect  his  sincerity. 
A  virile  old  friend  of  mine — who  lived  in  Texas, 
[268] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

though  he  went  there  from  Rhode  Island — used  to 
declare  with  sententious  emphasis  that  war  is  the 
state  of  man.  "Sir,"  he  was  wont  to  observe,  ad 
dressing  me  as  if  I  were  personally  accountable, 
"you  are  emasculating  the  human  species.  You 
are  changing  men  into  women  and  women  into  men. 
You  are  teaching  everybody  to  read,  nobody  to 
think;  and  do  you  know  where  you  will  end,  sir? 
Extermination,  sir — extermination!  On  the  north 
side  of  the  North  Pole  there  is  another  world 
peopled  by  giants;  ten  thousand  millions  at  the 
very  least ;  every  giant  of  them  a  hundred  feet  high. 
Now  about  the  time  you  have  reduced  your  uni 
verse  to  complete  effeminacy  some  fool  with  a  pick 
axe  will  break  through  the  thin  partition — the  mere 
ice  curtain — separating  these  giants  from  us,  and 
then  they  will  sweep  through  and  swoop  down  and 
swallow  you,  sir,  and  the  likes  of  you,  with  your 
topsy-turvy  civilization,  your  boasted  literature  and 
science  and  art!" 

This  old  friend  of  mine  had  a  sure  recipe  for  suc 
cess  in  public  life.  "Whenever  you  get  up  to  make 
a  speech,"  said  he,  "begin  by  proclaiming  yourself 
the  purest,  the  most  disinterested  of  living  men,  and 
end  by  intimating  that  you  are  the  bravest;"  and 

[269] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

then  with  the  charming  inconsistency  of  the  dreamer 
he  would  add:  "If  there  be  anything  on  this  earth 
that  I  despise  it  is  bluster." 

Decidedly  he  was  not  a  disciple  of  Ralph  Waldo 
Emerson.  Yet  he,  too,  in  his  way  was  an  idealist, 
and  for  all  his  oddity  a  man  of  intellectual  integrity, 
a  trifle  exaggerated  perhaps  in  its  methods  and 
illustrations,  but  true  to  his  convictions  of  right 
and  duty,  as  Emerson  would  have  had  him  be.  For 
was  it  not  Emerson  who  exclaimed,  "We  will  walk 
on  our  own  feet;  we  will  work  with  our  own  hands; 
we  will  speak  our  own  minds?" 

ii 

In  spite  of  our  good  Woodrow  and  our  lamented 
Theodore  I  have  quite  made  up  my  mind  that  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  the  ideal  in  public  life,  constru 
ing  public  life  to  refer  to  political  transactions. 
The  ideal  may  exist  in  art  and  letters,  and  some 
times  very  young  men  imagine  that  it  exists  in  very 
young  women.  But  here  we  must  draw  the  line. 
As  society  is  constituted  the  ideal  has  no  place,  not 
even  standing  room,  in  the  arena  of  civics. 

If  we  would  make  a  place  for  it  we  must  begin 
by  realizing  this.  The  painter,  like  the  lover,  is  a 
[270], 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

law  unto  himself,  with  his  little  picture — the  poet, 
also,  with  his  little  rhyme — his  atelier  his  universe, 
his  attic  his  field  of  battle,  his  weapons  the  uten 
sils  of  his  craft — he  himself  his  own  Providence. 
It  is  not  so  in  the  world  of  action,  where  the  condi 
tions  are  directly  reversed;  where  the  one  player 
contends  against  many  players,  seen  and  unseen; 
where  each  move  is  met  by  some  counter-move; 
where  the  finest  touches  are  often  unnoted  of  men  or 
rudely  blotted  out  by  a  mysterious  hand  stretched 
forth  from  the  darkness. 

"I  wish  I  could  be  as  sure  of  anything,"  said 
Melbourne,  "as  Tom  Macaulay  is  of  everything." 
Melbourne  was  a  man  of  affairs,  Macaulay  a  man 
of  books;  and  so  throughout  the  story  the  men  of 
action  have  been  fatalists,  from  Caesar  to  Napoleon 
and  Bismarck,  nothing  certain  except  the  invisible 
player  behind  the  screen. 

Of  all  human  contrivances  the  most  imperfect  is 
government.  In  spite  of  the  essays  of  Bentham 
and  Mill  the  science  of  government  has  yet  to  be 
discovered.  The  ideal  statesman  can  only  exist  in 
the  ideal  state,  which  has  never  existed. 

The  politician,  like  the  poor,  we  have  always  with 
us.  As  long  as  men  delegate  to  other  men  the 

[271] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

function  of  acting  for  them,  of  thinking  for  them, 
we  shall  continue  to  have  him. 

He  is  a  variable  quantity.  In  the  crowded  cen 
ters  his  distinguishing  marks  are  short  hair  and 
cunning;  upon  the  frontier,  sentiment  and  the  six- 
shooter!  In  New  York  he  becomes  a  boss;  in  Ken 
tucky  and  Texas,  a  fighter  and  an  orator.  But 
the  statesman — the  ideal  statesman — in  the  mind's 
eye,  Horatio!  Bound  by  practical  limitations  such 
an  anomaly  would  be  a  statesman  minus  a  party,  a 
statesman  who  never  gets  any  votes  or  anywhere 
— a  statesman  perpetually  out  of  a  job.  We  have 
had  some  imitation  ideal  statesmen  who  have  been 
more  or  less  successful  in  palming  off  their  pinch 
beck  wares  for  the  real ;  but  looking  backward  over 
the  history  of  the  country  we  shall  find  the  greatest 
among  our  public  men — measuring  greatness  by 
real  and  useful  service — to  have  been  while  they 
lived  least  regarded  as  idealists;  for  they  were 
men  of  flesh  and  blood,  who  amid  the  rush  of 
events  and  the  calls  to  duty  could  not  stop  to  paint 
pictures,  to  consider  sensibilities,  to  put  forth  the 
deft  hand  where  life  and  death  hung  upon  the 
stroke  of  a  bludgeon  or  the  swinging  of  a  club. 

Washington  was  not  an  ideal  statesman,  nor 
[272] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Hamilton,  nor  Jefferson,  nor  Lincoln,  though  each 
of  them  conceived  grandly  and  executed  nobly. 
They  loved  truth  for  truth's  sake,  even  as  they 
loved  their  country.  Yet  no  one  of  them  ever  quite 
attained  his  conception  of  it. 

Truth  indeed  is  ideal.  But  when  we  come  to 
adapt  and  apply  it,  how  many  faces  it  shows  us, 
what  varying  aspects,  so  that  he  is  fortunate  who 
is  able  to  catch  and  hold  a  single  fleeting  expres 
sion.  To  bridle  this  and  saddle  it,  and,  as  we  say 
in  Kentucky,  to  ride  it  a  turn  or  two  around  the 
paddock  or,  still  better,  down  the  home-stretch  of 
things  accomplished,  is  another  matter.  The  real 
statesman  must  often  do  as  he  can,  not  as  he  would ; 
the  ideal  statesman  existing  only  in  the  credulity 
of  those  simple  souls  who  are  captivated  by  appear 
ances  or  deceived  by  professions. 

The  nearest  approach,  to  the  ideal  statesman  I 
have  known  was  most  grossly  stigmatized  while  he 
lived.  I  have  Mr.  Tilden  in  mind.  If  ever  man 
pursued  an  ideal  life  he  did.  From  youth  to  age 
he  dwelt  amid  his  fancies.  He  was  truly  a  man  of 
the  world  among  men  of  letters  and  a  man  of  let 
ters  among  men  of  the  world.  A  philosopher  pure 
and  simple — a  lover  of  books,  of  pictures,  of  all 

[273] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

things  beautiful  and  elevating — he  yet  attained 
great  riches,  and  being  a  doctrinaire  and  having  a 
passion  for  affairs  he  was  able  to  gratify  the  as 
pirations  to  eminence  and  the  yearning  to  be  of 
service  to  the  State  which  had  filled  his  heart. 

He  seemed  a  medley  of  contradiction.  Without 
the  artifices  usual  to  the  practical  politician  he  grad 
ually  rose  to  be  a  power  in  his  party;  thence  to  be 
come  the  leader  of  a  vast  following,  his  name  a 
shibboleth  to  millions  of  his  countrymen,  who  en 
thusiastically  supported  him  and  who  believed  that 
he  was  elected  Chief  Magistrate  of  the  United 
States.  He  was  an  idealist;  he  lost  the  White 
House  because  he  was  so,  though  represented  while 
he  lived  by  his  enemies  as  a  scheming  spider  weav 
ing  his  web  amid  the  coil  of  mystification  in  which 
he  hid  himself.  For  he  was  personally  known  to 
few  in  the  city  where  he  had  made  his  abode;  a 
great  lawyer  and  jurist  who  rarely  appeared  in 
court ;  a  great  political  leader  to  whom  the  hustings 
were  mainly  a  stranger;  a  thinker,  and  yet  a 
dreamer,  who  lived  his  own  life  a  little  apart,  as  a 
poet  might;  uncorrupting  and  incorruptible;  least 
of  all  were  his  political  companions  moved  by  the 
loss  of  the  presidency,  which  had  seemed  in  his 
[274] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

grasp.  And  finally  he  died — though  a  master  of 
legal  lore — to  have  his  last  will  and  testament  suc 
cessfully  assailed. 

Except  as  news  venders  the  newspapers — espe 
cially  newspaper  workers — should  give  politics  a 
wide  berth.  Certainly  they  should  have  no  party 
politics.  True  to  say,  journalism  and  literature 
and  politics  are  as  wide  apart  as  the  poles.  From 
Bolingbroke,  the  most  splendid  of  the  world's  fail 
ures,  to  Thackeray,  one  of  its  greatest  masters  of 
letters — who  happily  did  not  get  the  chance  he 
sought  in  parliamentary  life  to  fall — both  English 
history  and  American  history  are  full  of  illustra 
tions  to  this  effect.  Except  in  the  comic  opera  of 
French  politics  the  poet,  the  artist,  invested  with 
power,  seems  to  lose  his  efficiency  in  the  ratio  of  his 
genius ;  the  literary  gift,  instead  of  aiding,  actually 
antagonizing  the  aptitude  for  public  business. 

The  statesman  may  not  be  fastidious.  The  poet, 
the  artist,  must  be  always  so.  If  the  party  leader 
preserve  his  integrity — if  he  keep  himself  disinter 
ested  and  clean — if  his  public  influence  be  inspiring 
to  his  countrymen  and  his  private  influence  ob 
structive  of  cheats  and  rogues  among  his  adherents 
— he  will  have  done  well. 

[275] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

We  have  left  behind  us  the  gibbet  and  the  stake. 
No  further  need  of  the  Voltaires,  the  Rousseaus  and 
the  Diderots  to  declaim  against  kingcraft  and 
priestcraft.  We  have  done  something  more  than 
mark  time.  We  report  progress.  Yet  despite  the 
miracles  of  modern  invention  how  far  in  the  arts  of 
government  has  the  world  traveled  from  darkness 
to  light  since  the  old  tribal  days,  and  what  has  it 
learned  except  to  enlarge  the  area,  to  amplify  and 
augment  the  agencies,  to  multiply  and  complicate 
the  forms  and  processes  of  corruption?  By  cor 
ruption  I  mean  the  dishonest  advantage  of  the  few 
over  the  many. 

The  dreams  of  yesterday,  we  are  told,  become  the 
realities  of  to-morrow.  In  these  despites  I  am  an 
optimist.  Much  truly  there  needs  still  to  be  learned, 
much  to  be  unlearned.  Advanced  as  we  consider 
ourselves  we  are  yet  a  long  way  from  the  most  rudi 
mentary  perception  of  the  civilization  we  are  so  fond 
of  parading.  The  eternal  verities — where  shall  we 
seek  them?  Little  in  religious  affairs,  less  still  in 
commercial  affairs,  hardly  any  at  all  in  political  af 
fairs,  that  being  right  which  represents  each  organ 
ism.  Still  we  progress.  The  pulpit  begins  to  turn 
from  the  sinister  visage  of  theology  and  to  teach 
[276] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

the  simple  lessons  of  Christ  and  Him  crucified.  The 
press,  which  used  to  be  omniscient,  is  now  only  in 
discriminate — a  clear  gain,  emitting  by  force  of 
publicity,  if  not  of  shine,  a  kind  of  light  through 
whose  diverse  rays  and  foggy  luster  we  may  now 
and  then  get  a  glimpse  of  truth. 

in 

The  time  is  coming,  if  it  has  not  already  arrived, 
when  among  fair-minded  and  intelligent  Americans 
there  will  not  be  two  opinions  touching  the  Hayes- 
Tilden  contest  for  the  presidency  in  1876-77 — that 
both  by  the  popular  vote  and  a  fair  count  of  the 
electoral  vote  Tilden  was  elcted  and  Hayes  was  de 
feated;  but  the  whole  truth  underlying  the  deter 
minate  incidents  which  led  to  the  rejection  of  Til- 
den  and  the  seating  of  Hayes  will  never  be  known. 

"All  history  is  a  lie,"  observed  Sir  Robert  Wai- 
pole,  the  corruptionist,  mindful  of  what  was  likely 
to  be  written  about  himself;  and  "What  is  history," 
asked  Napoleon,  the  conqueror,  "but  a  fable  agreed 
upon?" 

In  the  first  administration  of  Mr.  Cleveland 
there  were  present  at  a  dinner  table  in  Washing 
ton,  the  President  being  of  the  party,  two  leading 

[277] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Democrats  and  two  leading  Republicans  who  had 
sustained  confidential  relations  to  the  principals 
and  played  important  parts  in  the  drama  of  the 
Disputed  Succession.  These  latter  had  been  long 
upon  terms  of  personal  intimacy.  The  occasion  was 
informal  and  joyous,  the  good  fellowship  of  the 
heartiest. 

Inevitably  the  conversation  drifted  to  the  Elec 
toral  Commission,  which  had  counted  Tilden  out 
and  Hayes  in,  and  of  which  each  of  the  four  had 
some  story  to  tell.  Beginning  in  banter  with  in 
terchanges  of  badinage  it  presently  fell  into  remi 
niscence,  deepening  as  the  interest  of  the  listeners 
rose  to  what  under  different  conditions  might  have 
been  described  as  unguarded  gayety  if  not  impru 
dent  garrulity.  The  little  audience  was  rapt. 

Finally  Mr.  Cleveland  raised  both  hands  and  ex 
claimed,  "What  would  the  people  of  this  country 
think  if  the  roof  could  be  lifted  from  this  house  and 
they  could  hear  these  men?"  And  then  one  of  the 
four,  a  gentleman  noted  for  his  wealth  both  of 
money  and  humor,  replied,  "But  the  roof  is  not 
going  to  be  lifted  from  this  house,  and  if  any  one 
repeats  what  I  have  said  I  will  denounce  him  as  a 
liar." 

[278] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Once  in  a  while  the  world  is  startled  by  some 
revelation  of  the  unknown  which  alters  the  estimate 
of  a  historic  event  or  figure;  but  it  is  measurably 
true,  as  Metternich  declares,  that  those  who  make 
history  rarely  have  time  to  write  it. 

It  is  not  my  wish  in  recurring  to  the  events  of 
nearly  five-and-forty  years  ago  to  invoke  and 
awaken  any  of  the  passions  of  that  time,  nor  my 
purpose  to  assail  the  character  or  motives  of  any 
of  the  leading  actors.  Most  of  them,  including  the 
principals,  I  knew  well;  to  many  of  their  secrets 
I  was  privy.  As  I  was  serving,  in  a  sense,  as  Mr. 
Tilden's  personal  representative  in  the  Lower 
House  of  the  Forty-fourth  Congress,  and  as  a 
member  of  the  joint  Democratic  Advisory  or  Steer 
ing  Committee  of  the  two  Houses,  all  that  passed 
came  more  or  less,  if  not  under  my  supervision,  yet 
to  my  knowledge;  and  long  ago  I  resolved  that 
certain  matters  should  remain  a  sealed  book  in  my 
memory. 

I  make  no  issue  of  veracity  with  the  living;  the 
dead  should  be  sacred.  The  contradictory  prompt 
ings,  not  always  crooked;  the  double  constructions 
possible  to  men's  actions ;  the  intermingling  of  am 
bition  and  patriotism  beneath  the  lash  of  party 

[279] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

spirit;  often  wrong  unconscious  of  itself;  some 
times  equivocation  deceiving  itself — in  short,  the 
tangled  web  of  good  and  ill  inseparable  from  great 
affairs  of  loss  and  gain  made  debatable  ground  for 
every  step  of  the  Hayes-Tilden  proceeding. 

I  shall  bear  sure  testimony  to  the  integrity  of 
Mr.  Tilden.  I  directly  know  that  the  presidency 
was  offered  to  him  for  a  price,  and  that  he  refused 
it;  and  I  indirectly  know  and  believe  that  two 
other  offers  came  to  him,  which  also  he  declined. 
The  accusation  that  he  was  willing  to  buy,  and 
through  the  cipher  dispatches  and  other  ways  tried 
to  buy,  rests  upon  appearance  supporting  mistaken 
surmise.  Mr.  Tilden  knew  nothing  of  the  cipher 
dispatches  until  they  appeared  in  the  New  York 
Tribune.  Neither  did  Mr.  George  W.  Smith,  his 
private  secretary,  and  later  one  of  the  trustees  of 
his  will. 

It  should  be  sufficient  to  say  that  so  far  as  they 
involved  No.  15  Gramercy  Park  they  were  the  work 
solely  of  Colonel  Pelton,  acting  on  his  own  respon 
sibility,  and  as  Mr.  Tilden's  nephew  exceeding  his 
authority  to  act;  that  it  later  developed  that  dur 
ing  this  period  Colonel  Pelton  had  not  been  in  his 
perfect  mind,  but  was  at  least  semi-irresponsible; 
[280] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

and  that  on  two  ocasions  when  the  vote  or  votes 
sought  seemed  within  reach  Mr.  Tilden  interposed 
to  forbid.  Directly  and  personally  I  know  this  to 
be  true. 

The  price,  at  least  in  patronage,  which  the  Re 
publicans  actually  paid  for  possession  is  of  public 
record.  Yet  I  not  only  do  not  question  the  integ 
rity  of  Mr.  Hayes,  but  I  believe  him  and  most  of 
those  immediately  about  him  to  have  been  high- 
minded  men  who  thought  they  were  doing  for  the 
best  in  a  situation  unparalleled  and  beset  with  per 
plexity.  What  they  did  tends  to  show  that  men 
will  do  for  party  and  in  concert  what  the  same  men 
never  would  be  willing  to  do  each  on  his  own  re 
sponsibility.  In  his  "Life  of  Samuel  J.  Tilden," 
John  Bigelow  says : 

"Why  persons  occupying  the  most  exalted  posi 
tions  should  have  ventured  to  compromise  their 
reputations  by  this  deliberate  consummation  of  a 
series  of  crimes  which  struck  at  the  very  founda 
tions  of  the  republic  is  a  question  which  still  puzzles 
many  of  all  parties  who  have  no  charity  for  the 
crimes  themselves.  I  have  already  referred  to  the 
terrors  and  desperation  with  which  the  prospect  of 
Tilden's  election  inspired  the  great  army  of  office- 

[281] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

holders  at  the  close  of  Grant's  administration.  That 
army,  numerous  and  formidable  as  it  was,  was  com 
paratively  limited.  There  was  a  much  larger  and 
justly  influential  class  who  were  apprehensive  that 
the  return  of  the  Democratic  party  to  power  threat 
ened  a  reactionary  policy  at  Washington,  to  the  un 
doing  of  some  or  all  the  important  results  of  the 
war.  These  apprehensions  were  inflamed  by  the 
party  press  until  they  were  confined  to  no  class, 
but  more  or  less  pervaded  all  the  Northern  States. 
The  Electoral  Tribunal,  consisting  mainly  of  men 
appointed  to  their  positions  by  Republican  Presi 
dents  or  elected  from  strong  Republican  States,  felt 
the  pressure  of  this  feeling,  and  from  motives  com 
pounded  in  more  or  less  varying  proportions  of 
dread  of  the  Democrats,  personal  ambition,  zeal  for 
their  party  and  respect  for  their  constituents, 
reached  the  conclusion  that  the  exclusion  of  Tilden 
from  the  White  House  was  an  end  which  justified 
whatever  means  were  necessary  to  accomplish  it. 
They  regarded  it,  like  the  emancipation  of  the 
slaves,  as  a  war  measure." 

IV 

The  nomination  of  Horace  Greeley  in  1872  and 
the  overwhelming  defeat  that  followed  left  the 
[282] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

Democratic  party  in  an  abyss  of  despair.  The  old 
Whig  party,  after  the  disaster  that  overtook  it  in 
1852,  had  been  not  more  demoralized.  Yet  in  the 
general  elections  of  1874  the  Democrats  swept  the 
country,  carrying  many  Northern  States  and  send 
ing  a  great  majority  to  the  Forty-fourth  Congress. 

Reconstruction  was  breaking  down  of  its  very 
weight  and  rottenness.  The  panic  of  1873  reacted 
against  the  party  in  power.  Dissatisfaction  with 
Grant,  which  had  not  sufficed  two  years  before  to 
displace  him,  was  growing  apace.  Favoritism  bred 
corruption  and  corruption  grew  more  and  more 
flagrant.  Succeeding  scandals  cast  their  shadows 
before.  Chickens  of  carpetbaggery  let  loose  upon 
the  South  were  coming  home  to  roost  at  the  North. 
There  appeared  everywhere  a  noticeable  subsidence 
of  the  sectional  spirit.  Reform  was  needed  alike  in 
the  State  Governments  and  the  National  Govern 
ment,  and  the  cry  for  reform  proved  something 
other  than  an  idle  word.  All  things  made  for 
Democracy. 

Yet  there  were  many  and  serious  handicaps.  The 
light  and  leading  of  the  historic  Democratic  party 
which  had  issued  from  the  South  were  in  obscurity 
and  abeyance,  while  most  of  those  surviving  who 

[283]j 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

had  been  distinguished  in  the  party  conduct  and 
counsels  were  disabled  by  act  of  Congress.  Of  the 
few  prominent  Democrats  left  at  the  North  many 
were  tainted  by  what  was  called  Copperheadism — 
sympathy  with  the  Confederacy.  To  find  a  chief 
tain  wholly  free  from  this  contamination,  Democ 
racy,  having  failed  of  success  in  presidential  cam 
paigns,  not  only  with  Greeley  but  with  McClellan 
and  Seymour,  was  turning  to  such  Republicans  as 
Chase,  Field  and  Davis.  At  last  heaven  seemed  to 
smile  from  the  clouds  upon  the  disordered  ranks 
and  to  summon  thence  a  man  meeting  the  require 
ments  of  the  time.  This  was  Samuel  Jones  Tilden. 

To  his  familiars  Mr.  Tilden  was  a  dear  old 
bachelor  who  lived  in  a  fine  old  mansion  in  Gra- 
mercy  Park.  Though  60  years  old  he  seemed  in  the 
prime  of  his  manhood;  a  genial  and  overflowing 
scholar ;  a  trained  and  earnest  doctrinaire ;  a  public- 
spirited,  patriotic  citizen,  well  known  and  highly 
esteemed,  who  had  made  fame  and  fortune  at  the 
bar  and  had  always  been  interested  in  public  af 
fairs.  He  was  a  dreamer  with  a  genius  for  busi 
ness,  a  philosopher  yet  an  organizer.  He  pursued 
the  tenor  of  his  life  with  measured  tread. 

His  domestic  fabric  was  disfigured  by  none  of  the 
[284] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

isolation  and  squalor  which  so  often  attend  the  con 
firmed  celibate.  His  home  life  was  a  model  of 
order  and  decorum,  his  home  as  unchallenged  as  a 
bishopric,  its  hospitality,  though  select,  profuse  and 
untiring.  An  elder  sister  presided  at  his  board,  as 
simple,  kindly  and  unostentatious,  but  as  method 
ical  as  himself.  He  was  a  lover  of  books  rather 
than  music  and  art,  but  also  of  horses  and  dogs  and 
out-of-door  activity. 

He  was  fond  of  young  people,  particularly  of 
young  girls;  he  drew  them  about  him,  and  was  a 
veritable  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  in  his  gallantries 
toward  them  and  his  zeal  in  amusing  them  and  mak 
ing  them  happy.  His  tastes  were  fruga'  and  their 
indulgence  was  sparing.  He  took  his  wine  not 
plenteously,  though  he  enjoyed  it  —  especially  his 
"blue  seal"  while  it  lasted — and  sipped  his  whisky- 
and-water  on  occasion  with  a  pleased  composure 
redolent  of  discursive  talk,  of  which,  when  he  cared 
to  lead  the  conversation,  he  was  a  master.  He  had 
early  come  into  a  great  legal  practice  and  held  a 
commanding  professional  position.  His  judgment 
was  believed  to  be  infallible;  and  it  is  certain  that 
after  1871  he  rarely  appeared  in  the  courts  of  law 

[285] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

except  as  counsellor,  settling  in  chambers  most  of 
the  cases  that  came  to  him. 

It  was  such  a  man  whom,  in  1874,  the  Democrats 
nominated  for  Governor  of  New  York.  To  say 
truth,  it  was  not  thought  by  those  making  the 
nomination  that  he  had  any  chance  to  win.  He 
was  himself  so  much  better  advised  that  months 
ahead  he  prefigured  very  near  the  exact  vote.  The 
afternoon  of  the  day  of  election  one  of  the  group 
of  friends,  who  even  thus  early  had  the  Presidency 
in  mind,  found  him  in  his  library  confident  and 
calm. 

"What  majority  will  you  have?"  he  asked 
cheerily. 

"Any,"  replied  the  friend  sententiously. 

"How  about  fifteen  thousand?" 

"Quite  enough." 

"Twenty-five  thousand?" 

"Still  better." 

"The  majority,"  he  said,  "will  be  a  little  in  ex 
cess  of  fifty  thousand." 

It  was  53,315.    His  estimate  was  not  guesswork. 

He  had  organized  his  campaign  by  school  districts. 

His  canvass  system  was  perfect,  his  canvassers  were 

as  penetrating  and  careful  as  census  takers.    He 

[286] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

had  before  him  reports  from  every  voting  precinct 
in  the  State.  They  were  corroborated  by  the  offi 
cial  returns.  He  had  defeated  Gen.  John  A.  Dix, 
thought  to  be  invincible  by  a  majority  very  nearly 
the  same  as  that  by  which  Governor  Dix  had  been 
elected  two  years  before. 


The  time  and  the  man  had  met.  Though  Mr. 
Tilden  had  not  before  held  executive  office  he  was 
ripe  and  ready  for  the  work.  His  experience  in 
the  pursuit  and  overthrow  of  the  Tweed  Ring  in 
New  York,  the  great  metropolis,  had  prepared  and 
fitted  him  to  deal  with  the  Canal  Ring  at  Albany, 
the  State  capital.  Administrative  reform  was  now 
uppermost  in  the  public  mind,  and  here  in  the  Em 
pire  State  of  the  Union  had  come  to  the  head  of 
affairs  a  Chief  Magistrate  at  once  exact  and  exact 
ing,  deeply  versed  not  only  in  legal  lore  but  in  a 
knowledge  of  the  methods  by  which  political  power 
was  being  turned  to  private  profit  and  of  the  men  — 
Democrats  as  well  as  Republicans  —  who  were  prey 
ing  upon  the  substance  of  the  people. 

The  story  of  the  two  years  that  followed  relates 

[287] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

to  investigations  that  investigated,  to  prosecutions 
that  convicted,  to  the  overhauling  of  popular  cen 
sorship,  to  reduced  estimates  and  lower  taxes. 

The  campaign  for  the  Presidential  nomination 
began  as  early  as  the  autumn  of  1875.  The  South 
ern  end  of  it  was  easy  enough.  A  committee  of 
Southerners  residing  in  New  York  was  formed. 
Never  a  leading  Southern  man  came  to  town  who 
was  not  "seen."  If  of  enough  importance  he  was 
taken  to  No.  15  Gramercy  Park.  Mr.  Tilden  meas 
ured  to  the  Southern  standard  of  the  gentleman  in 
politics.  He  impressed  the  disfranchised  South 
ern  leaders  as  a  statesman  of  the  old  order  and  al 
together  after  their  own  ideas  of  what  a  President 
ought  to  be. 

The  South  came  to  St.  Louis,  the  seat  of  the 
National  Convention,  represented  by  its  foremost 
citizens,  and  almost  a  unit  for  the  Governor  of  New 
York.  The  main  opposition  sprang  from  Tam 
many  Hall,  of  which  John  Kelly  was  then  the  chief. 
Its  very  extravagance  proved  an  advantage  to  Til- 
den. 

Two  days  before  the  meeting  of  the  convention 
I  sent  this  message  to  Mr.  Tilden:  "Tell  Black- 
[288] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

stone" — his  favorite  riding  horse — "that  he  wins  in 
a  walk." 

The  anti-Tilden  men  put  up  the  Hon.  S.  S. — 
"Sunset" — Cox  for  temporary  chairman.  It  was 
a  clever  move.  Mr.  Cox,  though  sure  for  Tam 
many,  was  popular  everywhere  and  especially  at 
the  South.  His  backers  thought  that  with  him  they 
could  count  a  majority  of  the  National  Committee. 

The  night  before  the  assembling  Mr.  Tilden's  two 
or  three  leading  friends  on  the  committee  came  to 
me  and  said:  "We  can  elect  you  chairman  over 
Cox,  but  no  one  else." 

I  demurred  at  once.  "I  don't  know  one  rule  of 
parliamentary  law  from  another,"  I  said. 

"We  will  have  the  best  parliamentarian  on  the 
continent  right  by  you  all  the  time,"  they  said. 

"I  can't  see  to  recognize  a  man  on  the  floor  of 
the  convention,"  I  said. 

"We'll  have  a  dozen  men  at  hand  to  tell  you," 
they  replied.  So  it  was  arranged,  and  thus  at  the 
last  moment  I  was  chosen. 

I  had  barely  time  to  write  the  required  keynote 
speech,  but  not  enough  to  commit  it  to  memory; 
nor  sight  to  read  it,  even  had  I  been  willing  to 
adopt  that  mode  of  delivery.  It  would  not  do  to 

[289] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

trust  to  extemporization.  A  friend,  Col.  J.  Stod- 
dard  Johnston,  who  was  familiar  with  my  penman 
ship,  came  to  the  rescue.  Concealing  my  manu 
script  behind  his  hat  he  lined  the  words  out  to  me 
between  the  cheering,  I  having  mastered  a  few 
opening  sentences. 

Luck  was  with  me.  It  went  with  a  bang — not, 
however,  wholly  without  detection.  The  Indianans, 
devoted  to  Hendricks,  were  very  wroth. 

"See  that  fat  man  behind  the  hat  telling  him 
what  to  say,"  said  one  to  his  neighbor,  who  an 
swered,  "Yes,  and  wrote  it  for  him,  too,  I'll  be 
bound!" 

One  might  as  well  attempt  to  drive  six  horses  by 
proxy  as  preside  over  a  national  convention  by 
hearsay.  I  lost  my  parliamentarian  at  once.  I  just 
made  my  parliamentary  law  as  we  went.  Never 
before  or  since  did  any  deliberate  body  proceed  un 
der  manual  so  startling  and  original.  But  I  de 
livered  each  ruling  with  a  resonance — it  were  bet 
ter  called  an  impudence — which  had  an  air  of  au 
thority.  There  was  a  good  deal  of  quiet  laughter 
on  the  floor  among  the  knowing  ones,  though  I 
knew  the  mass  was  as  ignorant  as  I  was  myself; 
but  realizing  that  I  meant  to  be  just  and  was  ex- 
[290] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

pediting  business  the  convention  soon  warmed  to 
me,  and  feeling  this  I  began  to  be  perfectly  at 
home.  I  never  had  a  better  day's  sport  in  all  my 
life. 

One  incident  was  particularly  amusing.  Much 
against  my  will  and  over  my  protest  I  was  brought 
to  promise  that  Miss  Phoebe  Couzins,  who  bore  a 
Woman's  Rights  Memorial,  should  at  some  oppor 
tune  moment  be  given  the  floor  to  present  it.  I 
foresaw  what  a  row  it  was  bound  to  occasion. 

Toward  noon,  when  there  was  a  lull  in  the  pro 
ceedings,  I  said  with  an  emphasis  meant  to  carry 
conviction:  "Gentlemen  of  the  convention,  Miss 
Phoebe  Couzins,  a  representative  of  the  Woman's 
Association  of  America,  has  a  memorial  from  that 
body,  and  in  the  absence  of  other  business  the  chair 
will  now  recognize  her." 

Instantly  and  from  every  part  of  the  hall  arose 
cries  of  "No!"  These  put  some  heart  into  me. 
Many  a  time  as  a  schoolboy  I  had  proudly  de 
claimed  the  passage  from  John  Home's  tragedy, 
"My  Name  is  Norval."  Again  I  stood  upon  "the 
Grampian  hills."  The  committee  was  escorting 
Miss  Couzins  down  the  aisle.  When  she  came  with- 

[291] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

in  the  radius  of  my  poor  vision  I  saw  that  she  w«.,s 
a  beauty  and  dressed  to  kill. 

That  was  reassurance.  .Gaining  a  little  time 
while  the  hall  fairly  rocked  with  its  thunder  of 
negation  I  laid  the  gavel  down  and  stepped  to  the 
edge  of  the  platform  and  gave  Miss  Couzins  my 
hand. 

As  she  appeared  above  the  throng  there  was  a 
momentary  "Ah!"  and  then  a  lull,  broken  by  a 
single  voice: 

"Mister  Chairman.    I  rise  to  a  point  of  order." 

Leading  Miss  Couzins  to  the  front  of  the  stage 
I  took  up  the  gavel  and  gave  a  gentle  rap,  saying: 
"The  gentleman  will  take  Ms  seat." 

"But,  Mister  Chairman,  I  rose  .to  a  point  of 
order,"  he  vociferated. 

"The  gentleman  will  take  his  seat  instantly,"  I 
answered  in  a  tone  of  one  about  to  throw  the  gavel 
at  his  head.  "No  point  of  order  is  in  order  when  a 
lady  has  the  floor." 

After  that  Miss  Couzins  received  a  positive  ova 
tion  and  having  delivered  her  message  retired  in  a 
blaze  of  glory. 

[292] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

VI 

Mr.  Tilden  was  nominated  on  the  second  ballot. 
The  campaign  that  followed  proved  one  of  the  most 
memorable  in  our  history.  When  it  came  to  an  end 
the  result  showed  on  the  face  of  the  returns  196 
in  the  Electoral  College,  eleven  more  than  a  ma 
jority;  and  in  the  popular  vote  4,300,316,  a  ma 
jority  of  264,300  for  Tilden  over  Hayes. 

How  this  came  to  be  first  contested  and  then 
complicated  so  as  ultimately  to  be  set  aside  has  been 
minutely  related  by  its  authors.  The  newspapers, 
both  Republican  and  Democratic,  of  November  8, 
1876,  the  morning  after  the  election,  conceded  an 
overwhelming  victory  for  Tilden  and  Hendricks. 
There  was,  however,  a  single  exception.  The  New 
York  Times  had  gone  to  press  with  its  first  edition, 
leaving  the  result  in  doubt  but  inclining  toward  the 
success  of  the  Democrats.  In  its  later  editions  this 
tentative  attitude  was  changed  to  the  statement 
that  Mr.  Hayes  lacked  the  vote  of  Florida — 
"claimed  by  the  Republicans" —  to  be  sure  of  the 
required  votes  in  the  Electoral  College. 

The  story  of  this  surprising  discrepancy  be 
tween  midnight  and  daylight  reads  like  a  chapter  of 
fiction. 

[293] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

After  the  early  edition  of  the  Times  had  gone  to 
press  certain  members  of  the  editorial  staff  were  at 
supper,  very  much  cast  down  by  the  returns,  when 
a  messenger  brought  a  telegram  from  Senator 
Barnum,  of  Connecticut,  financial  head  of  the 
Democratic  National  Committee,  asking  for  the 
Times'  latest  news  from  Oregon,  Louisiana, 
Florida  and  South  Carolina.  But  for  that  un 
lucky  telegram  Tilden  would  probably  have  been 
inaugurated  President  of  the  United  States. 

The  Times  people,  intense  Republican  partisans, 
at  once  saw  an  opportunity.  If  Barnum  did  not 
know,  why  might  not  a  doubt  be  raised?  At  once 
the  editorial  in  the  first  edition  was  revised  to  take 
a  decisive  tone  and  declare  the  election  of  Hayes. 
One  of  the  editorial  council,  Mr.  John  C.  Reid, 
hurried  to  Republican  headquarters  in  the  Fifth 
Avenue  Hotel,  which  he  found  deserted,  the 
triumph  of  Tilden  having  long  before  sent  every 
body  to  bed.  Mr.  Reid  then  sought  the  room  of 
Senator  Zachariah  Chandler,  chairman  of  the  Na 
tional  Republican  Committee. 

While  upon  this  errand  he  encountered  in  the 
hotel  corridor  "a  small  man  wearing  an  enormous 
pair  of  goggles,  his  hat  drawn  over  his  ears,  a  great- 
[294] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

coat  with  a  heavy  military  cloak,  and  carrying  a 
gripsack  and  newspaper  in  his  hand.  The  news 
paper  was  the  New  York  Tribune,"  announcing 
the  election  of  Tilden  and  the  defeat  of  Hayes.  The 
newcomer  was  Mr.  William  E.  Chandler,  even  then 
a  very  prominent  Republican  politician,  just  ar 
rived  from  New  Hampshire  and  very  much  ex 
asperated  by  what  he  had  read. 

Mr.  Reid  had  another  tale  to  tell.  The  two 
found  Mr.  Zachariah  Chandler,  who  bade  them 
leave  him  alone  and  do  whatever  they  thought  best. 
They  did  so,  consumingly,  sending  telegrams  to 
Columbia,  Tallahassee  and  New  Orleans,  stating 
to  each  of  the  parties  addressed  that  the  result  of 
the  election  depended  upon  his  State.  To  these  was 
appended  the  signature  of  Zachariah  Chandler. 

Later  in  the  day  Senator  Chandler,  advised  of 
what  had  been  set  on  foot  and  its  possibilities,  is 
sued  from  National  Republican  headquarters  this 
laconic  message:  "Hayes  has  185  electoral  votes 
and  is  elected." 

Thus  began  and  was  put  in  motion  the  scheme  to 
confuse  the  returns  and  make  a  disputed  count  of 
the  vote. 

[295] 


'MARSE  HENRY" 


VII 

The  day  after  the  election  I  wired  Mr.  Tilden 
suggesting  that  as  Governor  of  New  York  he  pro 
pose  to  Mr.  Hayes,  the  Governor  of  Ohio,  that  they 
unite  upon  a  committee  of  eminent  citizens,  com 
posed  in  equal  numbers  of  the  friends  of  each,  who 
should  proceed  at  once  to  Louisiana,  which  ap 
peared  to  be  the  objective  point  of  greatest  moment 
to  the  already  contested  result.  Pursuant  to  a  tele 
graphic  correspondence  which  followed,  I  left 
Louisville  that  night  for  New  Orleans.  I  was  joined 
en  route  by  Mr.  Lamar  and  General  Walthal,  of 
Mississippi,  and  together  we  arrived  in  the  Cres 
cent  City  Friday  morning. 

It  has  since  transpired  that  the  Republicans  were 
promptly  advised  by  the  Western  Union  Telegraph 
Company  of  all  that  had  passed  over  its  wires,  my 
dispatches  to  Mr.  Tilden  being  read  in  Republican 
headquarters  at  least  as  soon  as  they  reached  Gram- 
ercy  Park. 

Mr.  Tilden  did  not  adopt  the  plan  of  a  direct 
proposal  to  Mr.  Hayes.  Instead  he  chose  a  body 
of  Democrats  to  go  to  the  "seat  of  war."  But  be 
fore  any  of  them  had  arrived  General  Grant,  the 
[296] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

actual  President,  anticipating  what  was  about  to 
happen,  appointed  a  body  of  Republicans  for  the 
like  purpose,  and  the  advance  guard  of  these  ap 
peared  on  the  scene  the  following  Monday. 

Within  a  week  the  St.  Charles  Hotel  might  have 
been  mistaken  for  a  caravansary  of  the  national 
capital.  Among  the  Republicans  were  John  Sher 
man,  Stanley  Matthews,  Garfield,  Evarts,  Logan, 
Kelley,  Stoughton,  and  many  others.  Among  the 
Democrats,  besides  Lamar,  Walthal  and  myself, 
came  Lyman  Trumbull,  Samuel  J.  Randall,  Wil 
liam  R.  Morrfison,  McDonald,  of  Indiana,  and 
many  others. 

A  certain  degree  of  personal  intimacy  existed 
between  the  members  of  the  two  groups,  and  the 
"entente"  was  quite  as  unrestrained  as  might  have 
existed  between  rival  athletic  teams.  A  Kentucky 
friend  sent  me  a  demijohn  of  what  was  represented 
as  very  old  Bourbon,  and  I  divided  it  with  "our 
friends  the  enemy."  New  Orleans  was  new  to  most 
of  the  "visiting  statesmen,"  and  we  attended  the 
places  of  amusement,  lived  in  the  restaurants,  and 
saw  the  sights  as  if  we  had  been  tourists  in  a  foreign 
land  and  not  partisans  charged  with  the  business 

[297] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

of  adjusting  a  Presidential  election  from  implacable 
points  of  view. 

My  own  relations  were  especially  friendly  with 
John  Sherman  and  James  A.  Garfield,  a  colleague 
on  the  Committee  of  Ways  and  Means,  and  with 
Stanley  Matthews,  a  near  kinsman  by  marriage, 
who  had  stood  as  an  elder  brother  to  me  from  my 
childhood. 

Corruption  was  in  the  air.  That  the  Returning 
Board  was  for  sale  and  could  be  bought  was  the 
universal  impression.  Every  day  some  one  turned 
up  with  pretended  authority  and  an  offer  to  sell. 
Most  of  these  were,  of  course,  the  merest  adven 
turers.  It  was  my  own  belief  that  the  Returning 
Board  was  playing  for  the  best  price  it  could  get 
from  the  Republicans  and  that  the  only  effect  of 
any  offer  to  buy  on  our  part  would  be  to  assist  this 
scheme  of  blackmail. 

The  Returning  Board  consisted  of  two  white 
men,  Wells  and  Anderson;  and  two  negroes,  Ken- 
ner  and  Casanave.  One  and  all  they  were  without 
character.  I  was  tempted  through  sheer  curiosity 
to  listen  to  a  proposal  which  seemed  to  come  direct 
from  the  board  itself,  the  messenger  being  a  well- 
known  State  Senator.  As  if  he  were  proposing  to 
[298] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

dispose  of  a  horse  or  a  dog  he  stated  his  errand. 

"You  think  you  can  deliver  the  goods?"  said  I. 

"I  am  authorized  to  make  the  offer,"  he  an 
swered. 

"And  for  how  much?"  I  asked. 

"Two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars,"  he 
replied.  "One  hundred  thousand  each  for  Wells 
and  Anderson,  and  twenty-five  thousand  apiece  for 
the  niggers." 

To  my  mind  it  was  a  joke.  "Senator,"  said  I, 
"the  terms  are  as  cheap  as  dirt.  I  don't  happen 
to  have  the  amount  about  me  at  the  moment,  but 
I  will  communicate  with  my  principal  and  see  you 
later." 

Having  no  thought  of  entertaining  the  proposal, 
I  had  forgotten  the  incident,  when  two  or  three 
days  later  my  man  met  me  in  the  lobby  of  the  hotel 
and  pressed  for  a  definite  reply.  I  then  told  him 
I  had  found  that  I  possessed  no  authority  to  act 
and  advised  him  to  go  elsewhere. 

It  is  asserted  that  Wells  and  Anderson  did  agree 
to  sell  and  were  turned  down  by  Mr.  Hewitt ;  and, 
being  refused  their  demands  for  cash  by  the  Demo 
crats,  took  their  final  pay,  at  least  in  patronage, 
from  their  own  party. 

[299] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

VIII 

I  passed  the  Christmas  week  of  1876  in  New 
York  with  Mr.  Tilden.  On  Christmas  day  we  dined 
alone.  The  outlook,  on  the  whole,  was  cheering. 
With  John  Bigelow  and  Manton  Marble,  Mr.  Til- 
den  had  been  busily  engaged  compiling  the  data  for 
a  constitutional  battle  to  be  fought  by  the  Demo 
crats  in  Congress,  maintaining  the  right  of  the 
House  of  Representatives  to  concurrent  jurisdic 
tion  with  the  Senate  in  the  counting  of  the  elec 
toral  vote,  pursuant  to  an  unbroken  line  of  prec 
edents  established  by  that  method  of  proceeding  in 
every  presidential  election  between  1793  and  1872. 

There  was  very  great  perplexity  in  the  public 
mind.  Both  parties  appeared  to  be  at  sea.  The 
dispute  between  the  Democratic  House  and  the  Re 
publican  Senate  made  for  thick  weather.  Contests 
of  the  vote  of  three  States — Louisiana,  South  Caro 
lina  and  Florida,  not  to  mention  single  votes  in 
Oregon  and  Vermont — which  presently  began  to 
blow  a  gale,  had  already  spread  menacing  clouds 
across  the  political  sky.  Except  Mr.  Tilden,  the 
wisest  among  the  leaders  knew  not  precisely  what 
to  do. 

[300] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

From  New  Orleans,  on  the  Saturday  night  suc 
ceeding  the  presidential  election,  I  had  telegraphed 
to  Mr.  Tilden  detailing  the  exact  conditions  there 
and  urging  active  and  immediate  agitation.  The 
chance  had  been  lost.  I  thought  then  and  I  still 
think  that  the  conspiracy  of  a  few  men  to  use  the 
corrupt  returning  boards  of  Louisiana,  South  Caro 
lina  and  Florida  to  upset  the  election  and  make  con 
fusion  in  Congress  might  by  prompt  exposure  and 
popular  appeal  have  been  thwarted.  Be  this  as  it 
may,  my  spirit  was  depressed  and  my  confidence 
discouraged  by  the  intense  quietude  on  our  side,  for 
I  was  sure  that  beneath  the  surface  the  Republi 
cans,  with  resolute  determination  and  multiplied 
resources,  were  as  busy  as  bees. 

Mr.  Robert  M.  McLane,  later  Governor  of 
Maryland  and  later  still  Minister  to  France — a 
man  of  rare  ability  and  large  expreience,  who  had 
served  in  Congress  and  in  diplomacy,  and  was  an 
old  friend  of  Mr.  Tilden — had  been  at  a  Gramercy 
Park  conference  when  my  New  Orleans  report  ar 
rived,  and  had  then  and  there  urged  the  agitation 
recommended  by  me.  He  was  now  again  in  New 
York.  When  a  lad  he  had  been  in  England  with 
his  father,  Lewis  McLane,  then  American  Minister 

[301] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

to  the  Court  of  St.  James,  during  the  excitement 
over  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832.  He  had  witnessed 
the  popular  demonstrations  and  had  been  impressed 
by  the  direct  force  of  public  opinion  upon  law- 
making  and  law-makers.  An  analogous  situation 
had  arrived  in  America.  The  Republican  Senate 
was  as  the  Tory  House  of  Lords.  We  must  or 
ganize  a  movement  such  as  had  been  so  effectual 
in  England.  Obviously  something  was  going  amiss 
with  us  and  something  had  to  be  done. 

It  was  agreed  that  I  should  return  to  Washing 
ton  and  make  a  speech  "feeling  the  pulse"  of  the 
country,  with  the  suggestion  that  in  the  National 
Capital  should  assemble  "a  mass  convention  of  at 
least  100,000  peaceful  citizens,"  exercising  "the 
freeman's  right  of  petition." 

The  idea  was  one  of  many  proposals  of  a  more 
drastic  kind  and  was  the  merest  venture.  I  myself 
had  no  great  faith  in  it.  But  I  prepared  the  speech, 
and  after  much  reading  and  revising,  it  was  held  by 
Mr.  Tilden  and  Mr.  McLane  to  cover  the  case  and 
meet  the  purpose,  Mr.  Tilden  writing  Mr.  Randall, 
Speaker  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  a  letter, 
carried  to  Washington  by  Mr.  McLane,  instruct- 
[302] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

ing  him  what  to  do  in  the  event  that  the  popular 
response  should  prove  favorable. 

Alack  the  day!  The  Democrats  were  equal  to 
nothing  affirmative.  The  Republicans  were  united 
and  resolute.  I  delivered  the  speech,  not  in  the 
House,  as  had  been  intended,  but  at  a  public  meet 
ing  which  seemed  opportune.  The  Democrats  at 
once  set  about  denying  the  sinister  and  violent  pur 
pose  ascribed  to  it  by  the  Republicans,  who,  fully 
advised  that  it  had  emanated  from  Gramercy  Park 
and  came  by  authority,  started  a  counter  agitation 
of  their  own. 

I  became  the  target  for  every  kind  of  ridicule  and 
abuse.  Nast  drew  a  grotesque  cartoon  of  me,  dis 
torting  my  suggestion  for  the  assembling  of  100,- 
000  citizens,  which  was  both  offensive  and  libellous. 
Being  on  friendly  terms  with  the  Harpers,  I  made 
my  displeasure  so  resonant  in  Franklin  Square — 
Nast  himself  having  no  personal  ill  will  toward  me 
— that  a  curious  and  pleasing  opportunity  which 
came  to  pass  was  taken  to  make  amends.  A  son 
having  been  born  to  me,  Harper's  Weekly  con 
tained  an  atoning  cartoon  representing  the  child  in 
its  father's  arms,  and,  above,  the  legend  "10,000 
sons  from  Kentucky  alone."  Some  wag  said  that 

[303], 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

the  son  in  question  was  "the  only  one  of  the  100,- 
000  in  arms  who  came  when  he  was  called." 

For  many  years  afterward  I  was  pursued  by 
this  unlucky  speech,  or  rather  by  the  misinterpreta 
tion  given  to  it  alike  by  friend  and  foe.  Nast's  first 
cartoon  was  accepted  as  a  faithful  portrait,  and  I 
was  accordingly  satirized  and  stigmatized,  though 
no  thought  of  violence  ever  had  entered  my  mind, 
and  in  the  final  proceedings  I  had  voted  for  the 
Electoral  Commission  Bill  and  faithfully  stood  by 
its  decisions.  Joseph  Pulitzer,  who  immediately 
followed  me  on  the  occasion  named,  declared  that 
he  wanted  my  "one  hundred  thousand"  to  come 
fully  armed  and  ready  for  business;  yet  he  never 
was  taken  to  task  or  reminded  of  his  temerity. 

IX 

The  Electoral  Commission  Bill  was  considered 
with  great  secrecy  by  the  joint  committees  of  the 
House  and  Senate.  Its  terms  were  in  direct  con 
travention  of  Mr.  Tilden's  plan.  This  was  sim 
plicity  itself.  He  was  for  asserting  by  f ormal  reso 
lution  the  conclusive  right  of  the  two  Houses  act 
ing  concurrently  to  count  the  electoral  vote  and  de 
termine  what  should  be  counted  as  electoral  votes; 
[304] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

and  for  denying,  also  by  formal  resolution,  the 
pretension  set  up  by  the  Republicans  that  the  Presi 
dent  of  the  Senate  had  lawful  right  to  assume  that 
function.  He  was  for  urging  that  issue  in  debate 
in  both  Houses  and  before  the  country.  He  thought 
that  if  the  attempt  should  be  made  to  usurp  for 
the  president  of  the  Senate  a  power  to  make  the 
count,  and  thus  practically  to  control  the  Presi 
dential  election,  the  scheme  would  break  down  in 
process  of  execution. 

Strange  to  say,  Mr.  Tilden  was  not  consulted  by 
the  party  leaders  in  Congress  until  the  fourteenth 
of  January,  and  then  only  by  Mr.  Hewitt,  the  extra 
constitutional  features  of  the  electoral-tribunal 
measure  having  already  received  the  assent  of  Mr. 
Bayard  and  Mr.  Thurman,  the  Democratic  mem 
bers  of  the  Senate  committee. 

Standing  by  his  original  plan  and  answering 
Mr.  Hewitt's  statement  that  Mr.  Bayard  and  Mr. 
Thurman  were  fully  committed,  Mr.  Tilden  said: 
"Is  it  not,  then,  rather  late  to  consult  me?" 

To  which  Mr.  Hewitt  replied :  "They  do  not  con 
sult  you.  They  are  public  men,  and  have  their  own 
duties  and  responsibilities.  I  consult  you." 

In  the  course  of  the  discussion  with  Mr.  Hewitt 

[305] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

which  followed  Mr.  Tilden  said:  "If  you  go  into 
conference  with  your  adversary,  and  can't  break  off 
because  you  feel  you  must  agree  to  something,  you 
cannot  negotiate  —  you  are  not  fit  to  negotiate. 
You  will  be  beaten  upon  every  detail." 

Replying  to  the  apprehension  of  a  collision  of 
force  between  the  parties  Mr.  Tilden  thought  it 
exaggerated,  but  said:  "Why  surrender  now?  You 
can  always  surrender.  Why  surrender  before  the 
battle  for  fear  you  may  have  to  surrender  after  the 
battle?" 

In  short,  Mr.  Tilden  condemned  the  proceeding 
as  precipitate.  It  was  a  month  before  the  time  for 
the  count,  and  he  saw  no  reason  why  opportunity 
should  not  be  given  for  consideration  and  consulta 
tion  by  all  the  representatives  of  the  people.  He 
treated  the  state  of  mind  of  Bayard  and  Thurman 
as  a  panic  in  which  they  were  liable  to  act  in  haste 
and  repent  at  leisure.  He  stood  for  publicity  and 
wider  discussion,  distrusting  a  scheme  to  submit 
such  vast  interests  to  a  small  body  sitting  in  the 
Capitol  as  likely  to  become  the  sport  of  intrigue  and 
fraud. 

Mr.  Hewitt  returned  to  Washington  and  with 
out  communicating  to  Mr.  Tilden' s  immediate 
[306] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

friends  in  the  House  his  attitude  and  objection, 
united  with  Mr.  Thurman  and  Mr.  Bayard  in  com 
pleting  the  bill  and  reporting  it  to  the  Democratic 
Advisory  Committee,  as,  by  a  caucus  rule,  had  to 
be  done  with  all  measures  relating  to  the  great  issue 
then  before  us.  No  intimation  had  preceded  it.  It 
fell  like  a  bombshell  upon  the  members  of  the  com 
mittee. 

In  the  debate  that  followed  Mr.  Bayard  was  very 
insistent,  answering  the  objections  at  once  offered 
by  me,  first  aggressively  and  then  angrily,  going  the 
length  of  saying,  "If  you  do  not  accept  this  plan  I 
shall  wash  my  hands  of  the  whole  business,  and 
you  can  go  ahead  and  seat  your  President  in  your 
own  way." 

Mr.  Randall,  the  Speaker,  said  nothing,  but  he 
was  with  me,  as  were  a  majority  of  my  colleagues. 
It  was  Mr.  Hunton,  of  Virginia,  who  poured  oil 
on  the  troubled  waters,  and  somewhat  in  doubt  as 
to  whether  the  changed  situation  had  changed  Mr. 
Tilden  I  yielded  my  better  judgment,  declaring  it 
as  my  opinion  that  the  plan  would  seat  Hayes ;  and 
there  being  no  other  protestant  the  committee 
finally  gave  a  reluctant  assent. 

In  open  session  a  majority  of  Democrats  favored 

[307] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

the  bill.  Many  of  them  made  it  their  own.  They 
passed  it.  There  was  belief  that  Justice  David 
Davis,  who  was  expected  to  become  a  member  of 
the  commission,  was  sure  for  Tilden.  If,  under  this 
surmise,  he  had  been,  the  political  complexion  of 
"8  to  7"  would  have  been  reversed. 

Elected  to  the  United  States  Senate  from  Illi 
nois,  Judge  Davis  declined  to  serve,  and  Mr.  Jus 
tice  Bradley  was  chosen  for  the  commission  in  his 
place. 

The  day  after  the  inauguration  of  Hayes  my 
kinsman,  Stanley  Matthews,  said  to  me:  "You 
people  wanted  Judge  Davis.  So  did  we.  I  tell 
you  what  I  know,  that  Judge  Davis  was  as  safe  for 
us  as  Judge  Bradley.  We  preferred  him  because 
he  carried  more  weight." 

The  subsequent  career  of  Judge  Davis  in  the 
Senate  gave  conclusive  proof  that  this  was  true. 

When  the  consideration  of  the  disputed  votes 
before  the  commission  had  proceeded  far  enough  to 
demonstrate  the  likelihood  that  its  final  decision 
would  be  for  Hayes  a  movement  of  obstruction  and 
delay,  a  filibuster,  was  organized  by  about  forty 
Democratic  members  of  the  House.  It  proved 
rather  turbulent  than  effective.  The  South  stood 
[308] 


"MAT  SE  HENRY" 

very  nearly  solid  for  carrying  out  the  agreement 
in  good  faith. 

Toward  the  close  the  filibuster  received  what  ap 
peared  formidable  reinforcement  from  the 
Louisiana  delegation.  This  was  in  reality  merely 
a  bluff,  intended  to  induce  the  Hayes  people  to 
make  certain  concessions  touching  their  State  gov 
ernment.  It  had  the  desired  effect.  Satisfactory 
assurances  having  been  given,  the  count  proceeded 
to  the  end — a  very  bitter  end  indeed  for  the  Demo 
crats. 

The  final  conference  between  the  Louisianans 
and  the  accredited  representatives  of  Mr.  Hayes 
was  held  at  Wormley's  Hotel  and  came  to  be  called 
"the  Wormley  Conference."  It  was  the  subject  of 
uncommon  interest  and  heated  controversy  at  the 
time  and  long  afterward.  Without  knowing  why 
or  for  what  purpose,  I  was  asked  to  be  present  by 
my  colleague,  Mr.  Ellis,  of  Louisiana,  and  later  in 
the  day  the  same  invitation  came  to  me  from  the 
Republicans  through  Mr.  Garfield.  Something 
was  said  about  my  serving  as  a  referee. 

Just  before  the  appointed  hour  Gen.  M.  C.  But 
ler,  of  South  Carolina,  afterward  so  long  a  Senator 
in  Congress,  said  to  me:  "This  meeting  is  called  to 

[309] 


"MARSE  HE  ^ 

enable  Louisiana  to  make  terms  with  Hayes.  South 
Carolina  is  as  deeply  concerned  as  Louisiana,  but 
we  have  nobody  to  represent  us  in  Congress  and 
hence  have  not  been  invited.  South  Carolina  puts 
herself  in  your  hands  and  expects  you  to  secure  for 
her  whatever  terms  are  given  to  Louisiana." 

So  of  a  sudden  I  found  myself  invested  with  re 
sponsibility  equally  as  an  agent  and  a  referee. 

It  is  hardly  worth  while  repeating  in  detail  all 
that  passed  at  this  Wormley  Conference,  made  pub 
lic  long  ago  by  Congressional  investigation.  When 
I  entered  the  apartment  of  Mr.  Evarts  at  Worm., 
ley's  I  found,  besides  Mr.  Evarts,  Mr.  John  Sher 
man,  Mr.  Garfield,  Governor  Dennison,  and  Mr. 
Stanley  Matthews,  of  the  Republicans;  and  Mr. 
Ellis,  Mr.  Levy,  and  Mr.  Burke,  Democrats  of 
Louisiana.  Substantially  the  terms  had  been  agreed 
upon  during  the  previous  conferences — that  is,  the 
promise  that  if  Hayes  came  in  the  troops  should  be 
withdrawn  and  the  people  of  Louisiana  be  left  free 
to  set  their  house  in  order  to  suit  themselves.  The 
actual  order  withdrawing  the  troops  was  issued  by 
President  Grant  two  or  three  days  later,  just  as  he 
was  going  out  of  office. 

"Now,  gentlemen,"  said  I,  half  in  jest,  "I  am 
[310] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

here  to  represent  South  Carolina;  and  if  the  terms 
given  to  Louisiana  are  not  equally  applied  to  South 
Carolina  I  become  a  filibuster  myself  to-morrow 
morning," 

There  was  some  chaffing  as  to  what  right  I  had 
there  and  how  I  got  in,  when  with  great  earnest 
ness  Governor  Dennison,  who  had  been  the  bearer 
of  a  letter  from  Mr.  Hayes,  which  he  had  read  to 
us,  put  his  hand  on  my  shoulder  and  said:  "As  a 
matter  of  course  the  Southern  policy  to  which  Mr. 
Hayes  has  here  pledged  himself  embraces  South 
Carolina  as  well  as  Louisiana." 

Mr.  Sherman,  Mr.  Garfield  and  Mr.  Evarts  con 
curred  warmly  in  this,  and  immediately  after  we 
separated  I  communicated  the  fact  to  General  But 
ler. 

In  the  acrimonious  discussion  which  subsequently 
sought  to  make  ' 'bargain,  intrigue  and  corrup 
tion"  of  this  Wormley  Conference,  and  to  involve 
certain  Democratic  members  of  the  House  who 
were  nowise  party  to  it  but  had  sympathized  with 
the  purpose  of  Louisiana  and  South  Carolina  to  ob 
tain  some  measure  of  relief  from  intolerable  local 
conditions,  I  never  was  questioned  or  assailed.  No 
one  doubted  my  fidelity  to  Mr.  Tilden,  who  had 

[311] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

been  promptly  advised  of  all  that  passed  and  who 
approved  what  I  had  done. 

Though  "conscripted,"  as  it  were,  and  rather  a 
passive  agent,  I  could  see  no  wrong  in  the  proceed 
ing.  I  had  spoken  and  voted  in  favor  of  the  Elec 
toral  Tribunal  Bill,  and  losing,  had  no  thought  of 
repudiating  its  conclusions.  Hayes  was  already  as 
good  as  seated.  If  the  States  of  Louisiana  and 
South  Carolina  could  save  their  local  autonomy  out 
of  the  general  wreck  there  seemed  no  good  reason 
to  forbid. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Republican  leaders  were 
glad  of  an  opportunity  to  make  an  end  of  the  cor 
rupt  and  tragic  farce  of  Reconstruction;  to  unload 
their  party  of  a  dead  weight  which  had  been  bur 
densome  and  was  growing  dangerous;  mayhap  to 
punish  their  Southern  agents,  who  had  demanded 
so  much  for  doctoring  the  returns  and  making  an 
exhibit  in  favor  of  Hayes. 


Mr.  Tilden  accepted  the  result  with  equanimity. 

"I  was  at  his  house,"  says  John  Bigelow,  "when 
his  exclusion  was  announced  to  him,  and  also  on 
the  fourth  of  March  when  Mr.  Hayes  was  in- 
[312] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

augurated,  and  it  was  impossible  to  remark  any 
change  in  his  manner,  except  perhaps  that  he  was 
less  absorbed  than  usual  and  more  interested  in  cur 
rent  affairs." 

His  was  an  intensely  serious  mind;  and  he  had 
come  to  regard  the  presidency  as  rather  a  burden 
to  be  borne — an  opportunity  for  public  usefulness 
— involving  a  life  of  constant  toil  and  care,  than 
as  an  occasion  for  personal  exploitation  and  re 
joicing. 

How  much  of  captivation  the  idea  of  the  presi 
dency  may  have  had  for  him  when  he  was  first 
named  for  the  office  I  cannot  say,  for  he  was  as 
unexultant  in  the  moment  of  victory  as  he  was 
unsubdued  in  the  hour  of  defeat;  but  it  is  certainly 
true  that  he  gave  no  sign  of  disappointment  to  any 
of  his  friends. 

He  lived  nearly  ten  years  longer,  at  Greystone, 
in  a  noble  homestead  he  had  purchased  for  himself 
overlooking  the  Hudson  River,  the  same  ideal  life 
of  the  scholar  and  gentleman  that  he  had  passed 
in  Gramercy  Park. 

Looking  back  over  these  untoward  and  some 
times  mystifying  events,  I  have  often  asked  myself: 
Was  it  possible,  with  the  elements  what  they  were, 

[313] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

and  he  himself  what  he  was,  to  seat  Mr.  Tilden  in 
the  office  to  which  he  had  been  elected?  The  miss 
ing  ingredient  in  a  character  intellectually  and 
morally  great  and  a  personality  far  from  unim 
pressive,  was  the  touch  of  the  dramatic  discover 
able  in  most  of  the  leaders  of  men;  even  in  such 
leaders  as  William  of  Orange  and  Louis  XI;  as 
Cromwell  and  Washington. 

There  was  nothing  spectacular  about  Mr.  Til- 
den.  Not  wanting  the  sense  of  humor,  he  seldom 
indulged  it.  In  spite  of  his  positiveness  of  opinion 
and  amplitude  of  knowledge  he  was  always  courte 
ous  and  deferential  in  debate.  He  had  none  of  the 
audacious  daring,  let  us  say,  of  Mr.  Blaine,  the 
energetic  self-assertion  of  Mr.  Roosevelt.  Either 
in  his  place  would  have  carried  all  before  him. 

I  repeat  that  he  was  never  a  subtle  schemer — 
sitting  behind  the  screen  and  pulling  his  wires — 
which  his  political  and  party  enemies  discovered 
him  tot  be  as  soon  as  he  began  to  get  in  the  way 
of  the  machine  and  obstruct  the  march  of  the  self- 
elect.  His  confidences  were  not  effusive,  nor  their 
subjects  numerous.  His  deliberation  was  unfail 
ing  and  sometimes  it  carried  the  idea  of  indecision, 
not  to  say  actual  love  of  procrastination.  But  in  my 
[314] 


"MARSE  HENRY" 

experience  with  him  I  found  that  he  usually  ended 
where  he  began,  and  it  was  nowise  difficult  for  those 
whom  he  trusted  to  divine  the  bias  of  his  mind 
where  he  thought  it  best  to  reserve  its  conclusions. 

I  do  not  think  in  any  great  affair  he  ever  hesi 
tated  longer  than  the  gravity  of  the  case  required 
of  a  prudent  man  or  that  he  had  a  preference  for 
delays  or  that  he  clung  tenaciously  to  both  horns 
of  the  dilemma,  as  his  training  and  instinct  might 
lead  him  to  do,  and  did  certainly  expose  him  to 
the  accusation  of  doing. 

He  was  a  philosopher  and  took  the  world  as  he 
found  it.  He  rarely  complained  and  never  in 
veighed.  He  had  a  discriminating  way  of  balanc 
ing  men's  good  and  bad  qualities  and  of  giving  each 
the  benefit  of  a  generous  accounting,  and  a  just  way 
of  expecting  no  more  of  a  man  thai\it  was  in  him 
to  yield.  As  he  got  into  deeper  water  his  stature 
rose  to  its  level,  and  from  his  exclusion  from  the 
presidency  in  1877  to  his  renunciation  of  public  af 
fairs  in  1884  and  his  death  in  1886  his  walks  and 
ways  might  have  been  a  study  for  all  who  would 
learn  life's  truest  lessons  and  know  the  real  sources 
of  honor,  happiness  and  fame. 

[315] 


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